Hello everyone! Happy belated Thanksgiving! I hope everyone had a wonderful celebration with family and friends. This year, I was in the desert for Thanksgiving on a class trip, and while it was very different from past years at my aunt Rachel's house with my whole family, it was definitely an experience! The trip took us to the Arava area (between Beer Sheva and Eilat). We stayed at a Reform Kibbutz in the area (Kibbutz Yahel), which upholds many of the socialist values that the early kibbutz movement in Israel propagated. Every person, regardless of income, puts their money into a general fund that benefits every kibbutz member, and each family gets a monthly allowance that is based on family size. Many people work on the kibbutz, which has a dairy farm, vegetable crops, and guest houses for visitors. Others work outside the kibbutz in Eilat or the surrounding area. The Kibbutz is sponsored by the Reform movement but not all of its members are Reform, some are secular and some are significantly more religious.
There is a rabbi who lives there, but he also works with people at other kibbutzim and communities in the area. He spoke to our group while we were there, and one of the things he said was that his job was very much about meeting people where they were at in terms of religious observance. He described a time when a family approached him about having their son have an "aliyah l'torah" (basically, a chance for their son to read from the Torah). They were not a particularly religious family, and the son's main interest was scuba diving, not practicing Judaism. They wanted to have the ceremony in their home, and wanted this rabbi to do it. He was more than willing, and brought over a Torah scroll for the boy to read, and adapted the service to make it appropriate and meaningful for them. It was a great example of how rabbis need to adapt to the needs of their communities, and its not just about making sure that traditions and rituals are upheld. In fact, that can often be a turn off and make people feel isolated or excluded from Judaism, but if you are willing to help people find spirituality or meaning in a way that makes sense to them, then that is going to create a more welcoming environment for them to approach Judaism and Jewish life. I definitely feel that this is why I want to become a rabbi: not to ensure that everyone is practicing Judaism "correctly" or to help people find the "right way" to be a Jew, but rather to guide people towards a sense of connection and meaningful relationship with Judaism and the Jewish people, and to allow people to question and wrestle with their faith in a productive way. Part of that is teaching people the Jewish traditions and the meanings behind them and allowing for them to interpret those that they find pertinent and important to their lives.
In addition to spending time on Kibbutz Yahel, we hiked, took tours of other kibbutzim in the area, and went snorkeling in Eilat! All in all, a very fun and relaxing trip. Students from the Jewish Theological Seminary and American Jewish University (both Conservative seminaries in New York and LA respectively) came with us, and it was great to get a chance to meet them! I knew some of them already from other things I have done, but it was fun to see them again and to interact with new people! Don't get me wrong, I love my HUC class, but a little variety once in a while is definitely nice.
It was great to spend Thanksgiving in the desert, and being out there really was a beautiful experience. The stars in the sky there are just so much clearer, and its pretty powerful to look up and see the wide expanse above you. I was walking to dinner with a student from AJU, and he said "the stars up there--those are the same ones Abraham saw when God told him his people would be as numerous as the stars in the sky." It was a really amazing sentiment, and made me feel so connected to the land and to the Jewish narrative.
Now is the final push until winter break--so I will be busy with papers and tests and lots and lots of work. But, I am glad I got to spend Thanksgiving with people I have grown to love over these last few months, and I am so appreciative to each and every one of them for making me feel like even though I wasn't with my actual family for Thanksgiving, I was with another just as wonderful group of people.
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