Shavua Tov from Yerushalayim

My first Shabbat in Jerusalem was amazing. I'm not sure if this will be a typical Jerusalem Shabbat for me, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. For Friday night services, a few of my classmates and I ended up going to a Progressive synagogue called Kehilat Har-El. I LOVED the rabbi, and she gave the most fabulous d'var Torah on parshat Chukat. If you have no idea what that means, you can highlight that last sentence, right click on it, and if you have an awesome browser like Chrome, click "search on Google." The rabbi chose to focus on Miriam's death. Basically, throughout the Torah, Miriam had grown in importance in terms of her leadership among the Israelites. It is no coincidence that the Israelites complained about thirst directly following her death. After all, they were no longer able to partake of the waters of her well. Miriam had taken on such a central role that the Israelites were lost without her. What was really awesome is that she tied this into the growing leadership roll of women in the public sphere, especially in regards to Jewish life. She specifically talked about Rabbi Miri Gold. I'm not going to make you Google her. I did it for you:

http://www.haaretz.com/jewish-world/jewish-world-news/for-first-time-israel-to-recognize-reform-and-conservative-rabbis-1.433171

Yes, I'm making you work to understand my blog. I can't type forever! Anyway, just as Miriam was a central figure in the Israelites and has become more and more of a central figure for liberal Jews, women are slowly starting to be able to take on more leadership roles in the Jewish community. She also talked a lot about the courage that both Miriam and Rabbi Miri Gold have displayed and said that we could all stand to have a little bit more of that. I wish I could explain more of what she was talking about, but we all know that explaining things is not my forte. Want to know the most awesome part about the d'var Torah? It was entirely in Hebrew, and while I certainly didn't understand every single word, I understood the d'var as a whole. Rock! Afterwards, we went to the potluck dinner at Rachel's apartment, and the food was delicious.

For Shabbat morning services, I went to HUC, as two of my classmates who have been here for a while, Jen and Richard, were singing a couple of pieces. They were wonderful. I have some talented classmates, and I can't wait to learn from everyone. Rabbi Na'amah Kelman's sermon was very similar to the one that I heard on Friday night, except she also talked a lot about the war on women and the constant fight for equality. Loving the feminism. If it is not clear, I am a feminist. Not of the bra burning variety, but definitely of the pro equal representation variety. So the whole focus on Miriam's role in this portion and in the Torah as a whole has been quite satisfying for me. I realize there may have been some slightly esoteric stuff thus far in this post, but again, that is what Google is for :)

Anyway, after services, we went to lunch, and then I went back to Jen's place, where we decided to annoy her neighbors by singing. After that, since we didn't think it was fair to only annoy her neighbors, we went back to my place and sang some more while Carly cooked us a super delicious dinner. We did havdallah with the whole HUC community behind the King David Hotel overlooking the old city. What a way to bring in the new week! Shavua tov, y'all!