Just For Fun! – Page 3 – A Floor, But Not a Ceiling

A “Top 10 List” Too Good to Passover!

I can’t help it! It is 5:10 PM on Friday before headed into Passover Break and it has been such a wonderful and exhausting week that I lack all original thought…so, when in doubt…a Top 10 List (borrowed and adapted from sources too numerous to mention):

Top 10 Ways

To Improve Your Seder

The Passover Seder is the most widely observed Jewish ritual throughout the world. Yet, many sedarim are spent with families sitting around the table with books in front of their faces, until Uncle Henry asks, “When do we eat?”

The Seder is a wonderful opportunity for families to spend time doing something they might not otherwise do—talk with one another! The Seder was designed to be an interactive, thought provoking, and enjoyable experience, so now it is up to us to ensure that really happens. Here are my top ten suggestions on how to make your Seder a more positive and meaningful experience:

1. Tell the story of the Exodus

The core mitzvah of Passover is telling the story. Until the 9^th century, there was no clear way of telling the story. In fact, there was tremendous fluidity in how the story was told. The printing press temporarily put an end to all creativity of how to the story was told. We need not limit ourselves to the words printed in the Haggadah. Feel free to be creative in the way in which you tell the story. This could be done by means of a skit, game, or informally going around the table and sharing each person’s version of the story. If there are older members at the table, this might be a good time hear their “story,” and perhaps their “exodus” from whichever land they may have come.

2. Sing Songs

If your family enjoys singing, the Seder is a fantastic time to break out those vocal cords! In addition to the traditional array of Haggadah melodies, new English songs are written each year, often to the tunes of familiar melodies. Or just spend some time on YouTube! Alternatively, for the creative and adventurous souls, consider writing your own!

3. Multiple Haggadot

For most families, I would recommend choosing one haggadah to use at the table. This is helpful in maintaining consistency and ensuring that everyone is “on the same page.” Nevertheless, it is also nice to have extra haggadot available for different commentaries and fresh interpretations. Encourage your guests to bring to the seder any unusual haggadot they may have collected over the years. Consider starting your own haggadah collection, it is never too late!

4. Karpas of Substance

One solution to the “when are we going to eat” dilemma, is to have a “karpas of substance.” The karpas (green vegetable) is served towards the beginning of the seder, and in most homes is found in the form of celery or parsley. In truth, karpas can be eaten over any vegetable over which we say the blessing, “borei pri ha’adamah,” which praises God for “creating the fruit from the ground.” Therefore, it is often helpful to serve something more substantial to hold your guests over until the meal begins. Some suggestions for this are: potatoes, salad, and artichokes.

5. Assign Parts in Advance

In order to encourage participation in your seder, you may want to consider giving your guests a little homework! Ask them to bring something creative to discuss, sing, or read at the table. You may suggest that your guests come in costume—dressed as their favorite plague! All you have to do is ask, and you may be pleasantly surprised with the response.

6. Know your audience

This may seem obvious, but the success of your seder will largely depend on your careful attention to the needs of the seder guests. If you expect many young children at the seder, you ought to tailor the seder accordingly. If you have people who have never been to a seder before, be prepared for lots of basic questions and explanations. Do not underestimate your guests; if you take the seder seriously, they will likely respond positively.

7. Fun Activities

Everyone wants to have a good time at the seder. Each year, try something a little different to add some spice to the evening. Consider creating a Passover game such Pesach Family Feud, Jewpardy, or Who Wants to be an Egyptian Millionaire?! Go around the table and ask people fun questions with serious or silly answers.

8. Questions for Discussion

An adult seder ought to raise questions that are pertinent to the themes found in the haggadah. For example, when we read “ha lachma anya—this is the bread of affliction,” why do we say that “now we are slaves?” To what aspects of our current lives are we enslaved? How can we become free? What does it mean/what are the implications of being enslaved in today’s society?

We read in the haggadah, “in each generation, one is required to see to him/herself as if s/he was personally redeemed from Egypt.” Why should this be the case? How do we go about doing that? If we really had such an experience, how would that affect our relationship with God?

As you read through the Haggadah, push yourself to ask these type of questions, and open them up for discussion.

9. Share Family Traditions

Part of the beauty of Passover, is the number of fascinating traditions from around the world. Encourage your guests to share the traditions they remember about Passover as a child. Some families begin their own new traditions as well. One family I know likes to go around the table and ask everyone to participate in filling the cup of Elijah. As each person pours from his/her cup into Elijah’s, s/he offers a wish/prayer for the upcoming year.

10. Preparation!!!!

The more thought and preparation given to the seder, the more successful the seder will be. Don’t expect to just “wing it,” and hope that everything will fall into place. A thoughtful, creative, and enjoyable seder takes time to prepare. We often get caught up preparing for the meal, that it is easy to forget about the content of the seder. Spend the time, and you won’t regret it! Don’t forget to have fun.

And for one final quote to get you in the spirit to take action this holiday season…I leave you with:

Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik wrote, “History, Judaism says, cannot move or progress without the individual. God waits for man if there is something to be done. God does nothing until man initiates action. God waits for man, for a single person, to accept responsibility and initiate the process of redemption.”

The story of Passover is a dramatic example of this. While there is no question as to the divine authorship of the Israelites’ deliverance, freedom had to wait for Moses – for just one person – to see a burning bush, hear a call to service and answer…

“Hineini – here I am.”

Samson and Delightful

Oh the joys of your dedicated blog-writing time being a Friday afternoon headed into a three-day weekend!

I thought I would do something fun – at least fun for me, something I found fun to write; whether you will find it fun to read is an open question – and share three autobiographical short stories from my personal faith journey. They aren’t necessarily the most important stops on the trail, but they were three moments I enjoyed writing about. Beyond indulging my frustrated literary ambitions, I hope you will find them humorous where intended and, thus, provide you a little window into my soul.

I promise next week to stop talking about myself and to return to the more important topics of secular and Jewish education.

A Friendship Bracelet from God

The God of Religious School was an intellectual idea. The God of Camp was alive.

We moved to California from New Jersey when I was eleven. Jewish identity took on a new meaning once we found ourselves outnumbered. Perfunctorily enrolled in Hebrew School on the East Coast became intentionally enrolled in Jewish summer camp on the West. I had to be sent away to find community. And find it I did. I found my people at a Reform Jewish summer camp in the mountains of Santa Cruz. (I was twenty-three years old before I realized that a guitar-led friendship circle was not one of the commandments.) Early-adolescent longing became intertwined with spiritual longing. “Fitting in” at camp meant exactly the opposite as it did back home. At home, I wished I could be more like that guy or the other one. At camp, I wished I could be more like me.

The God of Camp was a verb. The Jon of Camp was its direct object.

Samson and Delightful

The call to a life of Jewish education came on a lake in Maine. The answer came in a hair salon in Berkeley.

After yet another summer at yet another Jewish summer camp, I realized that one could live a life infused with Judaism for more than three months a year. That and the fulfillment I had always felt from my forays into Jewish education set me on my future path. I informed everyone I thought one informs in such a situation – parents, friends, girlfriend, etc. I was feeling pretty good until I discovered that there was one more person left to tell…my hairdresser. Should I cut my hair in order to maximize my professional and academic possibilities?

This was no small decision. It had been four years since my last haircut of consequence and my entire college experience was written in the curls that hung past my shoulders. During that time I had developed a pronounced Samson complex – all success attributed to the symbolic persona I had so carefully cultivated through my tresses. (Not to mention being a delicious source of irritation for my father.)

My hairdresser was not so supportive. After a tumultuous four years together she was more than just the woman who did my hair, she was both advisor and confidant. When I sat down in the chair I became tongue-tied. After all we’ve been through, was this really the end of the longest relationship I’d ever had with a woman outside my family? Who else stood by me during that first year as my hair climbed higher and higher steadfast that what must go up must come down? Only her. Who else understood my heroic battles against humidity and convertibles? Her alone. But the call was strong and I was resolute.

Our conversation resembled that which I imagine takes place between a rabbi and a potential convert. That is, she refused me at least three times as a test to my seriousness. “I have some big news,” I began.

“What is it?” she replied.

“I’m ready to cut it off.”

“No. I cannot.”

“What do you mean? I think it’s time to cut it off.”

“This I cannot do.”

“I sort of thought it was my choice, you know.”

“Are you sure you want to do this? You can’t change your mind later.”

“I know. I’ve really thought about it. But, I’m ready.”

Finally she acquiesced. She gathered all my hair into one last ponytail of biblical proportion and cut it off with a huge pair of shearing scissors. I went on to graduate school in Jewish education. My hair went on to become a wig worn by a cancer survivor.

I think we both turned out okay.

Pigskin

There is a picture above my desk at home of the last time I ate a bacon double cheeseburger. It was at a Carl’s Jr. somewhere off Highway 5 in central California in the summer of 1996. If I try real hard I can still taste every charcoal-seasoned bacony bite. When your favorite foods are pork and shellfish, the decision to keep kosher is not trivial. The decision had been made that spring at another Carl’s Jr. off Highway 5 (I had a thing for Carl’s Jr.) while returning home to the San Francisco Bay Area for Passover. I was sitting down for lunch and I had the chapter from Danny Gordis’ yet-to-be-published God Was Not in the Fire on keeping kosher in one hand and said cheeseburger in the other – an epiphany waiting to happen.

I had spent the preceding months wrestling with God and losing badly. I was well into my first year studying at the University of Judaism in Los Angeles and the indoctrination was beginning to kick in. I had done my best to resist it. In fact, the culture shock I had experienced during my first semester was so strong that in response I moved farther to the left than I actually was. I couldn’t just go and eat my pork off campus because that would have been an admission that eating it was wrong. No, I had to make a statement by bringing my pork to campus and eating it in full view. On Shabbat. While wearing a Walkman. With my hair fully grown back out and my earrings back in place.

The situation was of my own doing. I mean it had been my bright idea to pursue my Master’s at an institution whose style of Judaism was completely foreign to me. The plan was to learn everything I could about, what was to me at the time, “traditional” Judaism and then head back home more fully able to make the autonomous decisions about Jewish practice which was my responsibility as a Reform Jew. It never crossed my mind for a second that I would actually decide to do any of it myself. No way. God certainly had more important things to worry about than what I ate for lunch and did on Saturdays. I was there as kind of a participant-observer, an anthropologist if you will. At the time I still felt like I did when I was younger and my synagogue took us to Los Angeles on a trip. I remembered driving through a Jewish neighborhood and pointing at Jews who wore kippot as if they were animals in a zoo. I had no intentions of becoming one of them.

Rabbinical students drink beer, watch sports, and go on dates. That may not come as a surprise to you, but it sure as heck did to me. I was living on a floor with all rabbinic students and the fact that they were normal guys doing normal guy stuff while at the same time wearing kippot, donning tefillin, keeping kosher and observing Shabbat completely blew my mind. The decision to live on the campus of the University of Judaism forever changed the path of my life. The combination of communal study – I’m the kind of guy who falls head over heels for Talmudic hermeneutics – and ritual observance, all in the comforting bosom of camp-like idyllic isolation was just too much for my poor unobservant heart to take. They got me.

The next few months were spent slipping down the slippery slope of greater and greater observance. It didn’t take long because I have a black and white personality. Grey is not my color. (I’m more of an autumn.) First I began to wear a kippah during class, but not outside. Then I started staying in on Friday nights, but going out on Saturdays. Slowly, but surely, the scope of my practice expanded. I spent many hours arguing with any rabbi or professor who’d take me on. I could not escape the logical progression of my belief. Namely, if I believed in God (I did) and if I believed in the divinity of the Bible (I did in a vague convoluted way) then the logical conclusion would be to do what the Bible said. Still considering rationality a virtue, I found myself ready to accept almost any of the commandments, except one – kashrut.

“IT MAKES NO SENSE!” I screamed to Danny Gordis on an April afternoon. “Shabbat makes sense. I totally get wearing a kippah, putting on tefillin, davening and all that stuff. But kashrut?! It’s totally and completely arbitrary. There is no reason why I can’t perform the values that underlie kashrut with a cheeseburger.”

“That’s true and it is equally true that kashrut makes no sense. That’s the whole point,” Danny replied.

“Excuse me?”

“Why does everything have to make sense? Religion is not science. You take it on faith not proof. If you want to know the value of kashrut, keep kosher. You cannot rationalize something that is not rational and you cannot understand the value of a practice you’ve never practiced. Stop talking and start acting. Embrace the irrational.”

So three months later I did, with a picture for posterity.

“Shanah tovah y’all!”

Afternoon!

The Jewish holiday of Rosh Hashanah begins tomorrow evening and is the most well-known of the Jewish “New Year’s” (we actually have four different ones, including Tu B’Shevat – if you follow this link you’ll get an explanation on why we have four and what they are.). Since most of us also follow the secular calendar, we’ll have an extra one each year on the eve of December 31st. And if you are in the field of education, well, the start of school provides yet another “new year”. Putting it all together, suffice it to say, we have ample opportunities each year to pause and reflect on the year that was and to hope and dream about the year that is yet to be.

I went into a Kindergarten class this afternoon to conduct an activity centered around the tradition of tashlikh – a ceremony in which we cast off the sins of the past with an eye towards improving our behavior for the future. For this activity, I had the children draw a picture and/or write about a behavior they want to avoid doing again – mistreating a sibling, being disobedient to a parent, not being a good friend. etc. After they made their project, they crumbled it into a ball and threw it into the trash. Bye-bye bad behaviors! Were it only that easy!

All schools count “character education” as part of their mission. All educators consider it part of their already impossible jobs to help children grow and develop as human beings. Part of what I enjoy about being in a Jewish Day School is that we get to make that part of our curriculum explicit. We are in the business of making menschen and during the High Holiday season, business is good!

This season our Middle Schoolers, under the direction of our Vice Principal, Edith Horovitz, who has masterminded this wonderful program for many years, have already made lunches for those who are hungry and baked honey cakes for the holiday and delivered them to the elderly. Programs like this – call it “service learning” or call it a “Mitzvah Program” – are opportunities for us to get outside the walls of the building and put into practice what we preach. It is not academic time lost, but rather life-changing experiences gained. Through programs like this, our students are reminded that there needs to be a proper balance between “study” and “action”.

(By the way, if you are interested in the Talmudic source for this dialectic, check this out and discuss amongst yourselves:)

So who will we become this year? Beyond all our academic hopes and dreams, will this be the year we become who we were meant to be? Will we live up to our own lofty expectations? Will we be better children, better students, better teachers, better siblings, better partners, better spouses, better colleagues, better friends – will we be a better “us”?

As the eve of a new Jewish Year approaches, it is my most sincerest hope that this is the year we’ve been waiting for. Personally, as I prepare to spend my first High Holiday season in my new community, let me express my gratitude on behalf of myself and my family on how welcome y’all (did that sound Southern enough?) have made us feel in such a short time. To the teachers, staff, parents, and students in this special school – thank you for your enthusiasm and your hard work. 5771 is shaping up to be a quite an amazing year…from my new school family to yours, “Shanah tovah!”