Topic: Newsletters

“Shanah,” the Hebrew word for year, has two opposite meanings: change, and repeat. On one hand, we know the coming year will hold the same calendar, the same holiday cycle, and what seems like the same life situations as the year before. On the other hand, life is always in flux. Life is unpredictable. And the potential for change is always present. If the Jewish new year was only about acknowledging external change, or celebrating the renewed cycle, it might have been called “shanah chadashah,” new year. Instead we call it Rosh Hashanah: head of the year, head of the change; a time when we dig into our heads, focusing on internal work, repairing relationships, fixing the past, improving ourselves… teshuvah. So it is within this framework that I’d like to place our work at Hazon, and specifically the hard work of change. To truly create a healthier and more sustainable world, we need the support and initiative of world governments. And that kind of advocacy is indeed part of our work. Yet the macro changes cannot happen without a sea change of individuals aspiring towards the transformation demanded by teshuvah – to treat each other better, to treat the […]

This has been a shocking week to be in England. I feel very sad. The overarching thread of the emails that I write for the Hazon list is our theme quote – “the Torah is a commentary on the world, and the world is a commentary on the Torah.” The various programs that Hazon delivers, the curricula we produce, the experiences we curate, the things for which we advocate; these exist not in and of themselves but as part of a larger picture. How do we best renew Jewish life so that the Jewish community can help to create a more sustainable world for everyone? That’s the frame through which I’m back in Manchester, soaking up what’s going on. I make these observations. This is all one story. I mean this not in the simplistic sense, widely commented upon already, that there is a revolt, across many of the democracies, against the established post-war order, encompassing Syriza, the Scottish Nationalists and to some extent Bernie Sanders on the left, and Le Pen, UKIP and Donald Trump on the right. But the underlying thread is deeper still. In contemporary life “electoral politics” is one set of conversations – polls, elections, who’s […]

Na’aseh v’nishmah – “we will do and we will learn” – are the words with which the Jewish people received the Torah, which we celebrated last weekend. The words are famous because of their order: it is the Torah’s intuition that one learns by doing, by trying things out, by taking a leap. These words underpin experiential education in general and the work of Hazon in particular, because they speak to the necessity of trying new things. Newness is not good for its own sake, and birthing new things is certainly hard. But the world is changing fast, and Jewish life is changing fast. We need to relearn the ancient wisdom of Jewish tradition. We need to learn old things in new ways, and sometimes new things in old ways. We need to inspire those who are already involved in Jewish life, we need to bring new people through the door, and we have to point Jewish life outwards to address some of the largest issues of our time. I’m thinking this because last week saw the inaugural JOFEE Network Gathering, bringing together leaders of the field with fresh faces and curious newcomers. It was an exceptionally complicated event to […]

Hazon’s tag line, built into our logo, is “Jewish inspiration. Sustainable communities.” These four words are an imperfect attempt to summarize not only an ethos that underpins our work, but also some of its contradictions. Those contradictions have, if anything, grown over time. This period between Pesach and Shavuot is a good time to explore them. Metaphorically we’re in the wilderness, traveling without Torah and without rules, trying to figure out how we go from being against something to being for something. The former, of course, is psychologically far easier. We were against apartheid. We were against the oppression of the Soviet Jews. We were and are against racism, we’re against anti-semitism, we’re against attacks on Israel. (There was a moving article yesterday which makes clear that murderous hatred is alive and well, amidst the things for us to be against.) But what are we for? What do we do with our freedom? What exactly is “Jewish inspiration?” When should we allow ourselves to be inspired, and when by contrast should we become alarmed? I recently read both Chaim Miller’s and Rabbi Joe Telushkin’s biographies of the late Lubavitcher rebbe, z”l, and right now I’m reading David Eliezrie’s The Secret […]

What do we read? The vital lesson of Hillel in the 21st century. I was mooching around the internet, looking for a copy of the (excellently-named) Chazon Ovadia (the haggadah of Rav Ovadia Yosef, z”l) and I was thinking about the fact that President Obama is the first president to host and lead a pesach seder at the White House. This somehow led me back to the remarkable speech that the president gave in eulogizing the Reverend Clementa Pinckney z”l last year. His speech included this: Reverend Pinckney once said, “Across the South, we have a deep appreciation of history; but we haven’t always had a deep appreciation of each other’s history.” What is true in the South is true for America. Clem understood that justice grows out of recognition of ourselves in each other. That my liberty depends on you being free, too. That history can’t be a sword to justify injustice, or a shield against progress, but must be a manual for how to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past – how to break the cycle. A roadway toward a better world. He knew that the path of grace involves an open mind – but, more importantly, […]

The current iteration of ideas and programs that are encompassed by “Jewish Outdoor, Food, Farming & Environmental Education,” ie “JOFEE” for short, is less than twenty years old. But Pesach – chag ha’aviv, the festival of spring – is more than two thousand years old. And civilization, depending on how you measure it, is perhaps ten thousand years old. We arise in relation to the physical world. We are nurtured by it, live within it, clothe ourselves, eat and drink. The contemporary world of moving from one structure of brick and glass, to another of brick and glass, via a container of perhaps steel and glass, is recent. It is trite to point this out, yet it is not trite to remind ourselves of these connections. One way of understanding Hazon’s work, and that of our partners, is simply to understand that to go outdoors in different ways is to think afresh about our lives and our choices. To hike, or plant, or harvest; to daven or meditate or just sit and feel the breeze; to sing, to learn, to celebrate… each of these is a moment of reconnection, with ourselves, with our friends and families and communities. If we […]

Had he lived, today would have been the birthday of Reb Shlomo Carlebach, z”l. Like David Bowie and Alan Rickman – each of them, also, of blessed memory – he died at 69. Nowadays we think of the biblical threescore years and ten as being not the measure of a full life – or so we hope. A growing number of people are making it to a hundred. Reb Shlomo, David Bowie, Alan Rickman; all three of them lived huge, good, rich lives, and all of them died too young. I love to read obituaries and I commend them as one of the better and more provoking sorts of contemporary short-form literature. The English newspapers – the Guardian and the Independent and the Telegraph each have no paywall – are especially good at this. Being reminded of the mortality we daily strive to forget is good for us. Religion, of course, is more than somewhat about mortality. When my uncle died, I offered to my militantly anti-religious aunt that I would say kaddish for him, if she wanted. My mother told me that my aunt’s reply would, of course, be “under no circumstances.” In fact – and in tears, unable […]

Rosh Chodesh Kislev, 5776 I got back to the US on Tuesday, after a swirling Israel trip that was rich and intense and thought-provoking. I share with you a few provisional thoughts, many of them self-contradictory: The self-reinforcing mirror worlds we live in cause damage in the real world. It’s far too easy to read op-ed pages we agree with and to like things on Facebook in a narrow range. Resist the urge to do so! I had rich and fascinating (and long) conversations this trip with a strong AIPAC supporter; with a Palestinian from Akko (her self-definition, by the way: not Israeli; not Israeli Arab; not Israeli Palestinian. Our conversation was in Hebrew); with parents from Talpiot, just across from the bus that was attacked; with a Jordanian from Amman; with a friend whose son is an anarchist and another whose son is in Sayeret Matkal. I had dinner with someone who didn’t want to go on vacation to Norway “because I just wouldn’t want to go to Oslo…” (!). And, more formally, an Encounter trip to Beit Jala; our Israel Ride with students from the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies; our Siach conference with a range of Israeli […]

I’m tired but feeling good. We rode today from Jerusalem to Ashkelon – 162 riders, on the first day of our 2015 Arava Institute Hazon Israel Ride. It was a good start. We took precautions against both rain and terrorism. As of the time of writing – Wednesday afternoon in Ashkelon – it’s happily been a quiet day on both fronts. A couple of reflections on the last week: Hamatzav (“the situation.”) I was thinking about the famous line in Mishnah Sanhedrin: anyone who saves a life, it is as if he saves an entire world. It’s preceded by the slightly less famous bit: one who takes someone’s soul; this is like destroying an entire world. In this most recent period that amplification of human power – taking one life, destroying a world – has played out not only the sense in which the Talmud intended (that each life has infinite significance) but also in the broader sense, that one or two individual acts of destruction can do existential damage on a far far larger stage. It is sad and tragic that there are young Palestinians so full of hate and despair that they would risk their lives – in […]

The name of this week’s Torah portion, Lech Lecha, means both “go forth” or “go out” and, more literally, “go to you.” It’s the week in which Avraham and Sarah begin their great odyssey towards a new land and a new paradigm. They leave their comfort zone for the unknown. Their journey gave birth not only to a family but – in the end – three world religions. So, despite the headlines, it feels like a good day to have landed in Israel. I’m out here for our annual Arava Institute Hazon Israel Ride, followed by our Siach gathering for social justice and environmental leaders. This Sunday I’m squeezing in an Encounter trip to Bethlehem, which I’m also looking forward to. I don’t think I’m any less sad, or angry, about some of what’s happening here in Israel, or in the region, than anyone reading this email. But, despite everything, I don’t feel completely hopeless. Governments can negotiate the absence of war. But actual peace – as impossibly far off as it may seem – can only arise through people, by building relationships of respect among those who disagree. The Arava Institute for Environmental Studies – our lead-partner on the […]