A second Siyyum of the entire Torah as a UJA-Federation learning community! #Shehechiyanu

This morning, we marked a second Siyyum of the entire Torah as a UJA-Federation of New York learning community! So grateful for the kind souls who have built this community each morning since we began on March 18, 2020. Every revolution of Torah is holy, and though we are transformed by the journey, we complete a cycle and begin the next in the very same breath.

 
For the entire archive of all 486 broadcasts to date, click here: https://www.facebook.com/ujafedny/videos/

I dedicate this morning's Siyyum to the memory of my precious Savta, Kuneh bat Avraham Ya'akov veNechama z"l. May her memory be forever a blessing.

#chazakchazakvenitchazek #strengthINcommunity
#hadranalach #WeBeginAgain

colorful fabrics billow/ my Savta's spirit carried by the wind.

"I see the wind!"

"No, dear child, you see how the wind moves through things..."

colorful fabrics

billow/ my Savta's spirit

carried by the wind.

Some Torah and some #MaryOliver to get ready for Shabbat. #ShabbatShalom

 

Life changes us.

The story is told about Franz Kafka that the last time he visited Berlin, he chanced upon a little girl in a park awash in tears. When he inquired as to the reason for her distress, she sobbed that she had lost her doll. Compassionately, Kafka countered that not to be the case. The doll had merely gone on a trip and, in fact, Kafka met her as she was about to leave. He promised that if the little girl would return to the park the next day, he would bring her a letter from her doll. And so Kafka did for several weeks, arriving each morning at the park with a letter for his new friend.

As his tuberculosis worsened, Kafka decided to return to Prague where he would soon die at age 41, but not before buying the girl another doll. Along with the doll came a letter in which Kafka insisted that this was the doll that belonged to his friend. Admittedly, she looked different, but then on her long trip the doll had seen many remarkable sights and gone through many searing experiences. Life had changed her appearance.

 
Jack Wertheimer, ed., The Uses of Tradition, p. 279
Quoted by Rabbi Ismar Schorsch on MyJewishLearning.com, https://www.myjewishlearning.com/.../transformative-power/

This was my Savta, Clara Creditor z"l

 

What a powerful, fun time I got to share with Rav Avi Baumol and Jonathan Ornstein at JCC Krakow!

This amazing and wide-ranging conversation touched on: the American #GunViolence Epidemic, Whoopie Goldberg, the tension/synthesis of Social Justice & Torah, Conservative (Denominational) Judaism, the depths of our Zionism, Pizmon: Jewish A Cappella, and the joy of building Jewish life here, there, and everywhere!  

A song of ascents. When God returned the captivity of Zion, we were as dreamers. Then our mouths filled with laughter and our tongues with song. (Psalm 126:1,2)