Israeli documentaries, Russian-Jewish photography from the early twentieth-century, and Yiddish radio – these are a just a few of the topics that will be covered in this year’s Community Lecture Series, presented by the Center for Jewish Studies at the University of Minnesota. The series is celebrating its tenth year, and will kick off the season with three exciting programs in October.
We have so many choices to make in our lives. This is both a blessing and a curse. Personally, I was able to choose the college I wanted to attend, the country where I wanted to study abroad, the city I wanted to live in after graduation, the profession I wanted to pursue. When I was ordained I was able to take the job that was the best fit regardless of the location. In my personal life I can choose to date or not to date, I can choose whether or not to get married and if I want to have children. I can choose to be vegan or vegetarian, to eat only organic or only unprocessed foods that are not GMO. At the grocery store there are endless options for everything I want to buy from toothpaste to shampoo to nut mixes. We are very lucky to have all of these choices, but they could drive a person crazy.
Today Yiddish is a language now spoken by less than half a million people worldwide. So why would the Sabes JCC host three weeks of Yiddish related festivities? And why would the community, even teens and young adults like me, be interested in hearing a speaker like Aaron Lansky, the famous preserver of Yiddish books? The bigger question is – Why, in 2013 should anyone care about Yiddish at all?
We are here tonight to measure ourselves against a cosmic yardstick as our planet has turned once more around the sun. We are here to notice how we have been buffeted, dented, shaped, polished by the world this year, and to notice the dimensions of the imprint that we have left in the world this time around.
Our constant access to the world through our new technologies has its costs. You know your life is different today than it was only a few years ago: 1) if you have a list of 20 phone numbers to reach five people; 2) if you struggle to stay in touch with any family members who do not have an email address; 3) if you use your phone to call your family to dinner and the text comes back, “what’s for dinner?” 4) if your feeling of accomplishment is measured in emails deleted; 5) if you are waiting in line at the grocery store and are impatient because you left your smartphone in the car; 6) if you wake up at 2am to go to the bathroom and check your E-mail on your way back to bed.
40 years ago today on the Hebrew Calendar, on the 10th of Tishrei, saw the outbreak of the Yom Kippur War instigated against Israel by Syria and Egypt. This was an event that certainly defined an era for Jews everywhere. Do you remember where you were when you heard that the war had broken out? I know exactly where I was. I was in utero. 40 years ago today, I was 55 days from being born. And the Jewish world that I was born into was a different world because of that war. Confidence was lost. The world was turned upside down again and Israel was forced to look at things in a different way.
The ancient wisdom of the Talmud teaches, rachmana liba bai, “God desires what’s inside the heart.” The name of our new mahzor, Lev Shalem, means a full heart. It suggests both the power and irony of the High Holy Day prayerbook. God’s name fills the pages, but the holidays are not really about the words between our hands. They are about the words of the heart, the relationships face-to-face that form and tear and need mending. The formal text can only take us so far.
This terrible war convinced the Arab world that they could not defeat Israel by conventional means. This, of course, led to the many waves of terror attacks that Israel essentially put an end to in 2004, thank God. But now, our biggest threat, more than Iran, more than Syria, more than internal strife, more than inequality and chauvinism and Jewish extremism, is the global delegitimization campaign against Israel—we’ve shifted back to the question of Israel’s legitimacy.
Music, activities and recipes to help you have a fun and meaningful Sukkot.
I’m not quite sure when or why it began, but it did.