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Riding Uphill, part II

November 3, 2010 by Patrick Beaulier

By Leon Adato

(Originally posted at www.torahdinner.com)

One of the comments I got back from the post “Riding Uphill” was from my friend Phil, who said, “Davening is hard, although it gets easier after the first, oh, five or seven years.  Then it gets hard again because you’ll have become so fluent at it that you will need to consciously slow down and focus on Kavana.”

I started to think about how long it might take to get “good” and what “good” looked like? Was “good” the people who led services at my synagogue?

Seth Godin wrote once about expertise in “The Myth of Preparation“. In it, he described 3 basic levels and the amount of effort to go from one to the other. The first phase – “beginner” is characterized by a steep rise in learning. The middle “novice” phase is mostly just repetition and practice with small incremental improvements, until you hit “expert” level.

All of this is pretty simplistic and the analyst part of me would love to see the supporting data. But that’s not the point. The point is that Seth’s description is close enough for his final premise:

“Here’s the myth: The novice stage is useful.

If all you’re going to do is go through the novice stage before you ship, don’t bother. If you’re not prepared to put in the grinding work of the expert stage, just do the beginner stuff and stop screwing around. Make it good enough and ship it and move on.

Go, give a speech. Go, start a blog. Go, ship that thing that you’ve been hiding. Begin, begin, begin and then improve. Being a novice is way overrated.”

Seth talks about “shipping” but what he really is talking about is making something public – going ahead and DOING instead of PREPARING TO DO.

This morning, instead of self-consciously whispering through my morning blessings – trying to hide what I was skipping, or what I was reading in English instead of Hebrew – I said them aloud. Sang a few of ‘em, when I could remember the tune.

As Seth would put it, I “shipped”.

It was rough. It was “not ready for prime time”. It was definitely not easy.

It might, as Phil said, take me another 4 years before it gets easier. But you know what?

For today, for the beginner that I am, it was Good Enough.

Filed Under: Community Member Blogs, Rants Tagged With: convert to judaism, convert to judaism online, darshan yeshiva, daven, Jewish, Jews, Judaism, online conversion, patrick "aleph" beaulier, patrick aleph, prayer, punktorah, rabbi beaulier, rabbi patrick aleph beaulier, Torah

OneShul: The First Completely Online Synagogue

August 17, 2010 by Patrick Beaulier

PunkTorah is proud to announce the fund-raising launch for OneShul.org, the world’s first web-based, community run synagogue.

OneShul was inspired by group of PunkTorah volunteers who began meeting online to daven with one another, using PunkTorah’s recently released Indie Yeshiva Pocket Siddur (available online and through ModernTribe.com). With the popularity of this “DIY Prayer Service” came the idea for a virtual synagogue without borders, based on collective Jewish values and spiritual independence.

“Synagogues are shutting down for the same reason that brick-and-mortar business are closing,” says Executive Director Patrick Aleph. “People live online and if you believe in being where people are, then you need to be there, too.”

Says PunkTorah Creative Director and “Alterna-Rebbe” Michael Sabani, “OneShul is an open synagogue for all of us to congregate, learn, lead, and empower each other. Traditional Jewish organizations and leaders have said that real community can’t be achieved online, or as they see it, synthetically. We challenge that notion. We say that yes, real community means communicating with each other in a meaningful way and that can be done online. We are proving it right now.”

OneShul is “independent” meaning that it does not tow a party line to any of the established Jewish movements. Instead, by being community ran, participants get to decide what kind of minyanim to make, the style of worship, etc. PunkTorah hopes that OneShul will be a diverse place, where all Jewish opinions are appreciated.

OneShul has already seen major success with its live, interactive Afternoon Prayer Services and Jewish classes, led by different members of the PunkTorah community via UStream. PunkTorah hopes to expand OneShul into something much larger, providing Kabbalat Shabbat, more holiday services, an “indie yeshiva” of Jewish books and blogs that are written collaboratively by volunteers, spiritual counseling via skype, a mobile davening app for the iPhone/iPad, tzedakah and tikkun olam programs, OneShul outreach houses across the country, volunteering and internship opportunities for students interested in Jewish communal service, and a launching pad for the spiritual future of the New Jew community. “Everything that a physical synagogue has, but better,” says Aleph.

To make this happen, PunkTorah has launched a fundraising drive through IndieGoGo.com and plans to raise $5,000 to create the “synagogue of the future”.

With OneShul, PunkTorah is challenging the notion that community only exists in neighborhoods. Says Michael Sabani, “Which community is more real? The one where I show up once a week and sit next to what is essentially a stranger, say ‘Shabbat shalom’ and then leave? Or the one I am in constant contact with through Facebook and Skype, who I know I can turn to in a time of need?”

To learn more about PunkTorah’s OneShul project, visit www.indiegogo.com/oneshul

PunkTorah is a non-profit (501c3-pending) organization dedicated to independent Jewish spirituality, culture, learning and debate.

Press Contact: Patrick Aleph

Filed Under: Community Member Blogs, Jewish Media Reviews, Random (Feelin' Lucky?), Your Questions Answered Tagged With: bible, conservative, convert, Counterculture, daven, ger, holiday, Jewish, Jews, Judaism, mitzvah, mitzvot, orthodox, prayer, Punk, rebel, reform, Religion, shul, synagogue, temple, ten commandments, Torah

Service of the Heart?

July 12, 2010 by Patrick Beaulier

I’ve neglected going to services lately because I am really not comfortable there. We go in, we pick up a siddur, we sit down, and invariably our daughter either wakes up or jumps down and starts running around. All the old bubbies start to murmur and give us dirty looks and then my wife has to escort the little vilde chaya out the door while I stay and daven alone. This is fine. It is routine and I expect it, though I’m saddened that we have to be separated during what I consider to be a both personally spiritually important time and a good spiritual environment for the kid.

My real disappointment lies in the way we are holding modern, “liberal-type” services.  We all sit in rows in a fancy sanctuary, sing songs and follow along and do the “call and response” type of thing. We listen patiently as the leader drones in that “poetry/sing-songy/disingenuous” kind of high pitched voice. And it struck me that it was all so, for lack of a better word, “church-y”. I hated it. It feels like it is copying the Protestant style of Western church worship, from the music to the atmosphere. Someone at the service even made a comment (jokingly, I think) about being “quiet at church”. I thought to myself, “Shouldn’t this be different than church? Why are we trying to be like that? To fit in? No thanks.” We are different, and that should be a good thing. Jews always have been different. We’re iconoclasts! We break down walls and smash idols! Heck, we’re different from each other! You know that old chestnut, “two Jews, three opinions”!

My first exposure to a Chabad type service was really, interesting. We were on vacation, so we went somewhere we normally wouldn’t have gone. This was very different. Everyone seemed to be mumbling and shuckling and I had no idea where I was in the service. After  fifteen minutes I gave up trying and I just followed along as best I could. The shaliach’s kids came right up to him and he would pick up the little ones in between prayers. It was pretty overwhelming and a disorienting.
The same type of thing happened later when I was at a much smaller minyan and everyone was davening at different speeds. I got flustered and frustrated. I even got mad at the guy next to me for going so fast and not doing it “right”.  After thinking later about why I got angry, what about everyone not praying together made me some upset, I figured it out.

Jacob Siegel, in a fantastic post you should check out, put it like this:

In the middle of this cacophony of prayers,  “I would form my own personal connection with G-d, and you, praying beside me, would do the same, and we would each be vocalizing at different paces, and we would each be inspiring the other to achieve a spiritual awareness that we would then carry throughout the day.” This is incredible to me. It is that independence in the midst of community, what I consider almost the definition of Yiddshkeit, that electrifies my neshama.

I’m not saying one way is right and the other wrong. I am saying that it is a shame if we are changing our nature to conform to an idea of what a progressive, liberal service should look like. Something that IndieYeshiva and PunkTorah are trying to do is to bring these ideas back into the way we “do” Jewish, and have them there for us, to make our Yiddishkeit genuine and real, and by “genuine and real” I don’t mean specifically that there is one right way to do things, but a way that resonates with our past. I’m taking about an Integral Judaism that would transcend and include the past (more on that in another post).

I would like to, if I may, let Mr. Siegel take us out, because any paraphrasing on my part would be just that, and I feel he puts is very eloquently:

‘When we pray, we share our energy. I davven, and you hear me and feel inspired, and I hear you and feel further inspired. Let’s thank our cantors for their efforts in service of us and G-d, and ask them to step down from the bimah and stand beside us, as we now all share together in our cleaving to G-d.”

Yasher Koach.

Michael ארי

Filed Under: Judaism & Belief, Random (Feelin' Lucky?), Rants Tagged With: Counterculture, darshan yeshiva, daven, integral, Jewish, Judaism, patrick "aleph" beaulier, patrick aleph, prayer, Punk, punktorah, rabbi patrick aleph beaulier, Religion, service, shul, siddur, synagogue, temple, Torah

Show Review: Captured By Robots @ The Earl (Atlanta, GA) 05/07/2010

May 14, 2010 by Patrick Beaulier

OK fine, I broke Shabbat to go see robots sing cover songs by Journey and Rick James. Got a problem with that?

For what it’s worth, I also davened (prayed) with the Atlanta Chevre Minyan, a pretty cool group of independent people doing a mixed Orthodox/Progressive service and one of the best oneg pot lucks I have ever seen.

At the Earl, I met up with my friend The Other Jeff Clark (also known as Jeff from Channel Zero, an Atlanta music scene icon). As I got out of my car, I remembered that I was still wearing my egalitarian kippah from the PunkTorah shop and thought, “mmmm, gee, better put on a hat instead.” So I threw on a hat over my yarmulke and ran in, just in time to catch the last few songs by The Falcon Lords, a band best described as superhero minimalist dance rock. Think Batman Forever chase scene music with the bravado of The Tick and a drum machine.

OK, on to Captured By Robots.

All I can say: coolest. thing. ever. And it helps that the singer Jay Vance (JBOT) is Jewish, and probably a genius.

The “group”, for lack of a better word, features one human (Jay), and a series of robots including DRMBOT 0110 (the drummer), GTRBOT666 (the guitar/bass player) and some stuffed apes that look like the demented cousins of the characters from Chuck-E-Cheese. Each robot actually plays an instrument, with Jay providing vocals and additional guitar.

What makes the show amazing is how Jay interacts with the robots, mostly DRMBOT and GTRBOT insulting him, the audience, and making sick, lewd jokes. I loved it. The on-stage conversations were seamless, and actually made you feel like these robots were alive (or maybe they were?)

Jay started off the set by asking if there were any Jews in the audience. Immediately my friend Jeff pulled my hat off, exposing my yarmulke. Jay got a kick out of it, and this “outing” gave me a chance, after the show, to talk to him.

I asked Jay about why, after thirteen years of Captured By Robots, he still does his act. “Because I believe in it,” he said, citing his work on a TV show featuring the band and the fact that he no longer needs a day job (Jay tours once a year with the group).

In 2005, Captured By Robots put out a CD based on the 1950’s film, “The Ten Commandments”. I asked Jay about it, and he said that the Exodus is the “greatest story ever told” (pun intended). He has been “watching the movie since [he] was a kid” and for him, “Heston is Moses.”

I asked Jay about his Jewish background and he replied, “I don’t go to seders or temple. When they [the Jews in my family] died, [my Judaism] was buried with them.” But for Jay, connecting his on-stage act with the Jewish people is about “heritage” and belonging to the culture. This included songs about the last plague of Egypt and a sex-romp about Nefretiri. I would make the argument that JBOT was a rabbi that night, not only connecting me with my Jewishness, but also creating an interfaith dialogue through metal-goes-dance-pop-rock. For a moment, we were a two person havurah (community).

Less talk, more rock. Check out Captured By Robots!
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSZV1BAGUbQ

(image courtesy of Captured By Robots)

Filed Under: Community Member Blogs, Jewish Media Reviews, Podcasts & Videos, Random (Feelin' Lucky?) Tagged With: Captured! By Robots, convert to judaism, Counterculture, darshan yeshiva, daven, Jewish, Jews, Judaism, Music, patrick "aleph" beaulier, patrick aleph, Punk, punktorah, rabbi beaulier, rabbi patrick aleph beaulier, rebel, Religion, review, Torah

Parshat Behar-Bechukotai

May 5, 2010 by Patrick Beaulier

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZepZp-FQa1c

Parshat Behar-Bechukotai

In the beginning of this week’s Torah portion, G-d tells Moses that every seventh year, the Hebrews should let their land “rest”. No planting, harvesting, etc. Just leave it alone. And if the land has any produce, make sure to leave some your animals, slaves, hired workers and people who live with you. G-d wants the land to rest, because then it will “become fertile”. There is a sense, here, that human beings spoil the land through their work, and that nature needs to repair itself so that it can continue to grow.

Farmers cultivate the land with tools, and the result is the harvest. Similarly, prayers are used as tools to cultivate divinity, the result being a connection to something transcendent.

Maybe it makes sense, then, that there be a “Sabbatical time” from prayer. It’s great to say brachot, daven, meditate, etc. But maybe we need to just chill out and enjoy life, so that our spiritual “land” can replenish itself. Instead of worrying about all the brachot, the correct prayers for each moment of life, keeping tabs of the weekly Torah portion, etc., we sometimes need to just step back, go on autopilot, and take a break from “being, thinking and acting Jewish” to just “being” ourselves.

Even though we aren’t “cultivating” the spiritual land, we will still have plenty of spiritual “produce”. And we are commanded to share this with everyone! And what happens after the Sabbatical? Our spiritual land is fertile again, and we can get back to business as usual, refreshed and more bountiful than before.

Bottom line: even rabbis take a day off (and from what I understand, it’s usually Monday).

Filed Under: Community Member Blogs, Jewish Text (Torah/Haftarah/Talmud), Podcasts & Videos Tagged With: bechukotai, behar, bible, Counterculture, daven, Jewish, jewish prayer, Jews, Judaism, Parsha, parshat, patrick "aleph" beaulier, patrick aleph, prayer, Punk, punktorah, rabbi patrick aleph beaulier, rebel, Religion, Torah

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