Independent Jewish Spirituality
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnswnXcRnec
Editor’s Note: It’s #FlashbackFriday with this old video from PunkTorah, originally posted March 2009!
The insights I got from watching the really bad Jodie Foster movie Contact, suffering from adult ADD and Zen Buddhism made me better understand Parshat Pekudei.
My teacher, Jill Hammer, posits that Passover is an initiation ritual. A ritual where we, as individuals are initiated into a tribe year after year, century after century, millennia after millenia. Really Passover is part of an extremely long initiation ritual that begins the night before Passover and ends at Shavuot — where we are transformed by accepting the Mitzvot and the relationship with the Holy One.
This long transformative period begins at the first of Nisan, which is know as the New Year of Kings. This is one of the four new years known on the Jewish calendar. It is the marker in time where we turn our thoughts to recommitting ourselves to the Holy One individually, but more importantly as a nation of people. To be a “king” you cannot just have an individual bound to you, but a full nation of people.
Most Passover seders are fun, family events that [Read more…]
During the month of Shevat, we have a special Shabbat — Shabbat Shirah, which the Shabbat where we read Parsha Beshalach (Ex 13:17-17:16). There are many named Shabbatot during the year, Shabbat Gadol, Shabbat Shuvah, etc. etc. Shabbat Shirah is more than just a Shabbat where we read a “special” Torah portion, I mean — aren’t all Parshot special? Ostensibly, Shabbat Shirah, Sabbath of Song, is called this because we read the “Song at the Sea” (Exodus 15). But like in so much of Jewish life, we’ve built and built on that.
It’s an Ashkenazi tradition to feed the birds on Shabbat Shirah. On the Sabbath of Song, we provide sustenance for the singers of the natural world. Right now I’m studying the Perek Shirah, a text that teaches us to learn Torah from the natural world, which is making this practice very present for me.
“The soul [Read more…]
Cheshvan, which starts at sundown October 16, 2012, is a month free of holidays. Because of this, Judaism often sees this as a sad or barren month. However, there is another school of thought that I want to embrace and share with the PunkTorah community. This school of thought says that Cheshvan is a month to take on new practices because there are no holidays to do.
I propose that we, the PunkTorah community, take on a Cheshvan challenge. What if we, together, use this month to make our lives and the world a better place? What if we pull forward a concept from the Days of Awe: Shinui Ma’aseh (שי
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