From the World of Creation

Submitted by Rachel Glazer

Emma Goldberg (New York, NY):

For my first Shabbat back at home, I committed myself to a full 25-hour halachic observance. Laptop shut down, cell phone turned off, wallet shoved somewhere deep in the recesses of my dresser. Twenty-four hours later I found myself on the couch, eyes glued to the clock, anxiously counting down the minutes until I could power up my computer and delve back into my normal life.

It wasn’t the absence of Facebook or text messages that I minded so much. It was the lack of creation. I had been working on a short story all week and lines of prose kept leaping into my head, winding their way to my fingertips and impatiently pulsing towards fresh notebook pages. I had spent the previous Thursday beginning that dreaded college essay, and Saturday at noon my latest lead sentence demanded to know why it wasn’t being recorded in a “brainstorm” document. Shabbat felt stifling in its absence of action, a difficult time for the doers of the world.

In a lot of ways, Bronfman was my five-week Shabbat. We took buses, turned on lights, and spent money on falafel, so halachically speaking, not really. But it was a five-week break from reality, when we had no obligations other than to question, share, and disagree. The Torah as water analogy that we discussed feels relevant; our learning made the ink bleed on my mental to-do list, made responsibilities like summer required reading and college applications feel irrelevant.

Shabbat is, as Abraham Joshua Heschel put it, our chance to “turn from the world of creation to the creation of the world.” Bronfman was a time to turn from to-do to to-deliberate, from act on this to analyze that. That is a lot more difficult to do at home without peers surrounding me who are eager to discuss prayer, spirituality, and egalitarianism.

Pirkei Avot teaches that learning is most important in that it inspires action. As I start to unpack and settle in at home, I feel ready to shift from discussion to doing, to begin planning my Ma’aseh project as a start. But I’ve also learned that study and action can and should co-exist. I don’t want to leave behind my ability to close my eyes, crumple up my sticky note lists, and slip into an existential question. In the past five weeks I’ve learned how much I can learn by putting away my pens and paper and rooting around in the filing cabinets of my mind. So next Shabbat once again I’ll be taking on the challenge of attempting to find meaning in the powering down of my laptop and the creation of a new world.

Returning

Drawn by Anna Meixler

Anna Meixler (White Plains, NY):

My duffel still sits like someone who’s all dressed up with nowhere to go. It’s a sorry sight, yet I prefer to see its olive canvas zipped tightly, bulging in strange places from the stress of my clothes. I like that my bedroom’s hardwood floor is littered with notebooks, voltage adapters, and toiletries. I enjoy that my jetlagged odysseys to the bathroom or the kitchen during the night are full of tripping and shuffling around the mess, banging my shins on my suitcase. The alternative is unsettling. I don’t want to unpack, to shake the Negev’s sand out of my shoes in fear that doing so will take me one step further from the night we sat in the desert, admiring its stars. I don’t want to wash my knee-length skirts, losing the smells and grime of the Old City in favor of Tide’s synthetic “Sea Breeze”. Unpacking means permanence; a tidy room says, “I’m here to stay and I want to see my floor and perhaps be able to walk in and out at night without risking injury.”

Drawn by Anna Meixler

I’m anxious without the smells and sounds and faces that grew so familiar and so beloved over those five and a half weeks. So I look at photos; I flip through my camera’s insides and am welcomed by waves of nostalgia and the smiling faces of Fellows. I draw people I’ve seen, hoping to solidify the smiling woman in South Tel Aviv and the ancient Rabbi in Tzfat. I try to bring these people closer, burning their eyes into my head and refusing to unpack and clean up as a promise that I’ll return soon. After all, I’d much rather unpack complex theological theories and sticky nutella sandwiches.

Some Haikus to Unpack

Anya (Likes) Tudisco (Seattle, WA):

A wallet is found
Oh goodie golly jeepers
Eat with happiness

A belief in God
Need not be so rational
God isn’t, is he?

I really like kids
Honest, fearless, quite funny
No, I won’t grow up

Sun shines clawing heat
I’ll miss you, more than you know
But clouds are waiting

A question at home
Not a six hundred ton stone
Merely a pebble

Feet on Goldstein floor
Never did wash these damn sheets
I like Nutella

Who are you to say
What holiness means for them?
Some more bias please

Stars, stone, and people
Past and present intertwined
History major?!

—————-

I am home again
Quinoa, hippies, and family
World away from there

“It was amazing”
Wish it was polite to say
“You can’t understand”

Thou shalt acquire
Thirst, a teacher, and a friend
Bronfman in three words

Two powerful fears
Satisfied complacency
Forgetting lessons

Can He find me there?
Walla, Walla Washington
Jews at a distance

An affirmation
I’m who I was beforehand
Just now I’m more me

Rich discovery
With an open heart, there are
No bounds to friendship

Madrichim sessions
Andrelle Eating Daniel- Yum!
Aching from laughter

Thanks to Assaf Snir
For finding all my lost shit
What a cool guy too

Eleven hundred
Memories of the summer
Captured in my hand

It will take decades
Unpacking this huge sandwich
Forever grateful

“Where do you come from?”

Ayelet Wenger (Columbus, OH):

It was the second day and a faculty member was instructing us on our next activity.

“We’re going to take you to the mini mall up the street,” he told us. “What you have to do is go up to people and talk to them.”

We gazed at him in blank amazement as the principles of parents and teachers revolted in our heads. “Don’t talk to strangers.” “Mind your own business.” “Don’t disturb that nice man, dear, he’s busy.”

“It’s a piece of cake,” our teacher assured us. “Find out what they think of Netanyahu. Get their opinions on the best cottage cheese brand. Walk up to someone on the street and ask, ‘Where do you come from?’”

Five weeks later I waved goodbye to the last Bronfman fellow and stepped on to my connection flight. As I thrust my boarding pass at the flight attendant, I had the swooping sensation of stepping off of the heady peak of an ivory tower. The three a.m. debates on G-d, the visits to tombs, walls, and ruins of the ancient world, the unending flood of brilliant speakers and teachers–all of these were gone, to be memorialized only in a facebook thread.

What had happened to me? Here I was, stuffing the ratty green knapsack I had come with into the baggage rack, lending half an ear to the same old airplane safety presentation that I had heard five weeks ago. The lessons that had appeared so concrete on the program appeared fragile and rootless now. Would I maintain what I had learnt, or would my newfound openness to the stories of others wash off as easily as the greasy stickiness of an overnight El-Al flight? Had I really learned anything?

A young black woman in a knee-length skirt sat down in the seat next to mine and pulled out a bible.

“So,” I began, “Where do you come from?”

The Evolution of Bronfman

Rafi Ellenson (New York, NY):

I don’t want to go to Jewish Disneyland again, my Jewish Observance can be best summed up by my celebration of Shabbat, what moves me more than anything else are my legs, and the decision to attend a secular high school was amongst the most challenging of my life.
Which became
Yes, I find gender studies to be a fascinating field, I’ve been reading a lot of Stanislavsky lately to learn about the process of directing, some modern values require disobedience to Halachah, and experience is different than discussion.
Which became
Who’s this girl who wrote the poem?
Which became
Hi, I’m Rafi from New York City, you invented a food preservation system?, when did you become a Ba’al T’shuvah?, and, as I thought to myself, everyone here is so nice.
Which became
Existential crisis, crisis of faith, gender norm crisis, and why is Israel important crisis.
Which became
Judaism is important to me because of its tradition and it defines me more than I define it, the Kotel has some sort of irrational power on me, feminism is as much about equality of both genders as raising up a formerly subjugated people, and Israel is the irreplaceable Jewish melting pot.
Which became the most intense 5 weeks of my life wherein everything was scrutinized, I befriended those I would have never otherwise, and I learned as much about other peoples’ views as I did my own.
Thank you.