Summer of (Bres)love

Moses Goren is from New York City. A strong social justice activist, he is a member of the Feminists at Friends club and Raising Awareness Advocating Diversity at his school. Moses is also an avid guitarist, visual artist, and leads havurah classes for young children at the Aggadah school.

 

My summer with the Bronfman Youth Fellowship was a beautiful and enriching experience. I met so many brilliant people from backgrounds totally unlike my own. I learned from them, I struggled with them, and I even fell in love with some of them. Over the past six weeks I’ve had something of a summer fling, which I’ve kept under wraps up to this point but which I now would like to reveal.

This summer I fell in love with Rebbe Nachman of Breslov. It’s cliché, I know: the classic story of boy-meets-long-dead-Hasidic-rabbi.

In a sense, Rebbe Nachman fell for me first.  Let me explain. I was playing pool with Itamar on my homestay at his house in Herzliya. Itamar’s pool table was dangerously close to his book shelf, so every time I took a shot from one side of the table the back of my cue knocked a couple of books to the floor. I sent dozens of books flying that weekend, but something about Martin Buber’s The Tales of Rabbi Nachman compelled me to pick it up and read it later that night. Perhaps the book just seemed out of place; Itamar, like myself, is a devout atheist, and Buber’s collection of stories was the only Jewish book on his shelf. I read eighty pages that night and was so engrossed that I was unaware of how much I was reading or how late it was getting.

As in any good love story, we come from different backgrounds and are temperamentally different. Growing up in the 21st century on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, my life is full of technology, secular learning, and pork. I’m an atheist. I don’t pray. I have a distant relationship with God. I believe the actions of human beings are predetermined by trillions of cause and effect relationships that follow the laws of chemistry, physics, and logic. At age 17 I am still a bachelor. Nachman grew up in a small town in what is now Ukraine. He studied Talmud. He was married at age 13. I’m pretty sure he ate Kosher food when he wasn’t fasting. My great grandfather bought and sold feathers and artificial flowers, while Nachman’s great grandfather was the Baal Shem Tov, founder of Hasidism, and one of the most important and influential Jewish mystical teachers of all time. Rebbe Nachman’s stories taught simplicity over sophistication. He taught his students to be in constant communication with God, to author one’s own prayers about any desire one felt or lesson one learned. Rebbe Nachman would find my thought too sophisticated, and he would be shocked that I never pray. But opposites attract?

Nachman’s stories are dreamlike, fantastical, often verging on psychedelic. They are filled with kings, princesses, wise men, and demons. I was surprised to find that they almost never explicitly dealt with God, Jews, or Israel. I may have fallen for them because they are amusing and surprising, but Rabbi Nachman’s stories are more than a pretty face. I could sense that there was meaning concealed in the stories that went beyond entertainment. That meaning still plays hard to get; it’s part of Nachman’s appeal. Later, lessons taught by Rabbi Mishael gave me some of the skills I needed to look deeper, but the deeper I went the more I became aware of more and more layers I didn’t understand. A new, heavily annotated collection of stories led me to some of the classic Breslover interpretations of Nachman’s symbolism. I learned that kings are stand-ins for God and that physical journeys are stand-ins for spiritual ones. I, an atheist who despairs of his ability to have a meaningful spiritual relationship with God, nevertheless searched stories like “The Lost Princess,” “The Sophisticate and the Simpleton,” and “The Humble King” hungrily for maps of spiritual journeys and advice about how to pray.

Ours was a forbidden love. We would stay up together long past curfew. Every night I read the story I had read the night before, I read the next story in the book without footnotes, I read it again with footnotes, and then if I had time, I read one of the shorter parables in the back of the book. Sometimes I would sit in the hallway in front of my room, reading in the sliver of light coming through the door which led to the Ramah building. If Daniel the madrich walked from the men’s dorms to the women’s dorms and happened to look over his right shoulder, he would see me there and tell me to go to sleep. Not wanting to wake my roommates I would go to my room and take Nachman into the bathroom where, if balanced properly on the window sill, a few lines of text could be illuminated. Only when I had finished reading could I go to sleep.

In Breslov at the turn of the 19th century, Nachman told stories to wake people up who were asleep. Even though in Jerusalem in 2016 I stayed up long after curfew to read his stories, I’m sure Rebbe Nachman would have counted me among the sleeping. Rebbe Nachman told stories when his conventional teaching methods failed. He considered his stories a form of compact Torah. The stories conveyed complicated moral and mystical truths in language simple enough for students to understand and remember. He aimed for the gut and the heart. His stories lodged themselves in my heart and gut, acting upon me just as if I were one of his original sleeping followers.

Ours was always an unlikely love story, and I hope it can continue to defy the odds. I hope what began as a fling will become a lifelong love. The summer is over, but Rebbe Nachman’s stories are as beautiful and mysterious to me as they were when I first read them. Along with my many new friends and teachers from my Bronfman summer, my heart belongs to Rebbe Nachman.

 

Mifgash

Isaiah Milbauer is from New York City. He is a columnist for the Hunter Observer and plays a central part on his school’s Model UN and Mock Trial teams. A lover of nature, he also founded the Hunter Outdoors Club. The past summer he attended the Great Jewish Books Program at the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Massachusetts.

 

Both of us traced our roots to Poland.

Perhaps his great grandparents had lived a few doors down from my own, belonged to the same Shul, knew the same people. Perhaps their children had grown up together, gone to school together, played in streets together.

But then, separation — two boats departed from the same mooring. Friends turned to faces in small faded photographs. Our families never saw one another again. His family arrived in the ports of Tel Aviv. My family arrived in New York.

And now he is a Sabra, a proud settler, and a soccer player. And I am an American, a proud New Yorker and a baseball player.

We sit next to each other on a bus racing through woods west of Jerusalem. Next to each other I feel we are worlds away. A barrier of language sits firmly between us. But with persistence and listening we form bridges across difference, locate a sense of trust.

First we discuss school. Our school days look quite different. Mine begins at eight and ends a mere six hours later. His begins with the sunrise and ends at dinner time. What accounts for the massive difference? Half of his day is devoted to the study of Talmud and Torah. Before Bronfman, Talmud was about as foreign to me as chocolate milk in a bag. Though I had read a book comparing the Talmud to the internet, I had never studied a single page.

I try to explain baseball. I don’t make much headway. Frankly, the sport is pretty bizarre. Basketball however is common ground. In fact, Israelis are not familiar with the name Isaiah as the English version of Yeshayahu the prophet, but rather as the name of basketball player Isaiah Thomas. Amid genial conversation about sports, suddenly I am asked: Would I make aliyah?

I pause. Every year at the end of my family’s Passover seder I utter the phrase, “Next year in Jerusalem!” However, never have I stopped to examine its meaning. I’ve never felt like a refugee in America. I’ve never longed for life in Israel. American Judaism I’ve experienced in the States, from spending time at the Yiddish Book Center in Massachusetts to singing songs at my reform summer camp to listening to the experiences of other fellows, has for the most part felt vibrant, rich and alive. But is it not true that I’ve seen acculturation at work around me? Even in my own home, Shabbos rituals have somewhat fallen out of practice. Many questions over the past couple years have challenged my Jewish identity, but never before had I been forced to really justify American Judaism. After all, the Jewish communities I am part of are American. Further, in these communities, Israel has been at the periphery of Jewish identity. I’ve never viewed American identity as a variable and as incongruous with my Judaism.

The simple question posed to me on the bus did not lead to a desire to make aliyah, but rather pushed to value and crystalize my understanding of American Judaism. I responded to the question with a newfound appreciation of the unique aspects of American Judaism — its wonderful ability to be in dialogue with other cultures and to grow and innovate. “No” I said “I probably won’t make aliyah.” The Negev is beautiful, but I’m afraid I won’t start a Kibbutz there anytime soon.

Alright here’s a confession. That day on the bus, I didn’t say “no.” I said “maybe.” I was afraid that a forward statement of the unlikelihood of my Jewish pilgrimage would polarize my seatmate and me. However, as the Mifgash continued, as I grew closer to my seatmate, I grew more comfortable with sharing my desire to remain an American Jew. I was more willing to say that both our families had found homes since migration from Poland. Even in disagreement, my seatmate and I were still friends.  Both of us cared deeply about this modern Judaism thing. Perhaps that was enough to unify us.

But our families boats have not quite come to rest. Both my seatmate and I recognize that our Jewish homes are flawed. As Mish discussed in his lecture “Two Zions,” the American and Israeli Jewish projects have both made great strides but also confront many questions. Instead of attempting to determine which project is better, I hope Jews can work to perfect both. Though discussion of American Judaism at Bronfman has made me keenly aware of its failings, Bronfman has certainly made me optimistic about the future of American Judaism.

The Reflection Looking into the Abyss

 

Ethan Lipson is from Phoenix, AZ, and is an active Eagle Scout. He dreams of becoming a self-supporting hiker/philosopher. Fluent in five instruments, he founded the Ukulele Club and is his school’s unofficial minstrel. Ethan also runs Varsity Cross Country and works at a restaurant called Flower Child.

This journey has not been an easy one: full of tears, laughter, sleepless nights, sleep-filled lectures, and an unsafe amount of the use of the word dichotomy. Many of us felt as though we were on a roller coaster both emotionally and often physically. However, if there has been a constant this Fellowship it is reflection. After every speaker: reflect. After every Shabbat: reflect. After every time that Abe and I walked to the refrigerator shirtless: reflect or for some, try to forget. We don’t only reflect on our experiences but also our beliefs and the implications of those beliefs. For those reasons, I felt that my blog post should touch upon the theme of reflection. The stories below are all how I remember the scene now, as opposed to an immediate transcription of events from a journal entry that day. These are personal memories, however I used only third-person pronouns because these stories and feelings most likely happened/occurred to others as well.

The Journal

A boy sits down at his desk and sighs. Hmm. His journal has been lying open for twenty minutes but his pen has not even been touched.

• How can I not know what to write? He asks himself aloud. I traveled to a foreign country, learned a new language or rather attempted to learn, argued with professionals and cried with strangers.

He looks up and the light bulb above his head illuminates. This is not any of the typical Bronfman bulbs like the “Social Construct” bulb, “Use-Of-The-Word-Dichotomy” bulb or even the “What-If-I-Accidentally-Bump-Into-The-Light-Switch-Because-It’s-Shabbat-And-I-Forgot-To-Leave-It-On-But-I-Really-Don’t-Want-To-Pee-On-The-Toilet-Seat-Again” bulb. This is the Creativity light that hardly ever has enough energy to turn on because of lack of sleep.

• I will give a series of vignettes. He decides.

The Classroom

He sits down at his first shiur. “Contemporary Israeli Poetry In Dialogue With the Bible,” is the name of the course. Poetry is his comfort zone and he is excited to prove his right to a spot on the Fellowship. Within moments, his leg is shaking and he is uncontrollably tapping his pen. His sharp tongue has been dulled by the humbling experience of realizing how little he knows.

Walking Tours

He sits down on the bench after passing out dinner to his friends. He opens the wrapping around his falafel and is about to take a bite, one much too large by his mother’s standard, when his attention is called and he turns his head abruptly. He slowly looks down at the ball of falafel that has fallen from his hand. He picks it up from the dirt below. He looks left. He looks right. And then faster than he has done anything in his life before, he blows the dust off and sticks it in his mouth.

Shul

• He heard himself say.

He looked around, smiling, at the sea of tallitot.

• My sister would never believe me if I told her I prayed in an orthodox shul. For that matter she would laugh just if she heard me say the word “shul”. He thought to himself.

The Shabbat service was in Hebrew and had 100% less guitar than the reform services of his home. At one point he recognized the Mourner’s Kaddish and over-zealously began to recite it to prove to Morris that he knew something about Judaism. In truth, he only knew the Mourner’s Kaddish because at home that meant there was less than five minutes left in the service. Morris was a sixty-year-old man who made Aliyah from London two years previous. Morris had been flipping the pages for him in the siddur (as if that would help him stay focused) throughout the service. He quickly realized that only people in mourning were saying the prayer. He stopped abruptly. Maybe it was the tables that people were praying/studying at, it certainly was not the mechitza, but in that foreign place of prayer he felt. Comfortable.

Caesarea

He picks up the floating Frisbee and whips it ten meters to his friend standing thigh-high in the salt water. As the friend flicks the disk back to him, he makes the decision to dramatically dive to catch it. As his body slaps the water a spray of water erupts. The salt water stings his eyes and then it is not only his eyes that sting but also his chest. And then another sharp pinch on his calf. Rapidly he feels one on his left forearm. He stands up and rubs the salt from his eyes. He looks down and chuckles. Floating around him are three jellyfish.  Now he is no friend to the jellyfish community but he would consider himself familiar. He looks around and establishes that there are not many other jellyfish floating near his friends.  He also knows that if he calls “jellyfish” it will create frenzy and buy him some time to get to the pizza, waiting just past the shore, first. So he picks up the disc, makes his way to the shore and calls:

• JELLYFISH!!!!

Masada

He groans as he turns off his alarm. He clothes himself and grabs his instrument. Dragging his feet, he walks over to his roommate to wake him as well. The two of them make their way down the hall along with twelve strings.

• 1, 2, 3, 4….. And the music flows.

Somehow, despite it being 1:45 AM they have found their vibe and they are jumping and singing with immense energy. By 2:00 AM they had shuffled onto the bus and were departing for their sunrise hike. He walks down the aisle looking for a seat. There is an open seat next to her and he claims it. After fifteen minutes of falling in and out of sleep on each other’s shoulders he concedes and stretching his legs across the aisle, lays his head upon her lap. He falls asleep to her gently playing with his hair until she too falls asleep.

Tsfat

He walks, or rather stumbles, out of shul short of breath. He hasn’t prayed an ounce in the past hour but the Chasidim had him jumping and dancing ‘til he had blisters on his feet. When he catches his breath he looks up with his grin, but what he sees quickly changes that. One of the young women in his group is crying. He looks around and sees more of the girls that he cares so much about in pain. And he hates himself for it. He realizes that he is responsible for their tears. He realizes that he fell into the trap of the mob. The charismatic dancing pulled them in and made them blind to the sexist culture they were perpetuating. He is ashamed of himself. He is ashamed of the text that he held so dear.

• After all, how could MY book of love and learning turn good men into drones? He thinks out loud.

He pulls the beads from his wrist and in that same motion the elastic cord tightens, snaps, and 104 beads cascade to the stone road below.

Kibbutz Maseryk

He sits in the moadon. His two compatriots by his side and a party of hummus-loving Israelis fill the space around them. They are loud. They are pleasant. One rolls a cigarette then passes the leather tobacco pouch to the girl next to him. After licking the rolling paper, the Jewish-Socialist offers him the tobacco wordlessly with a gesticulation.

• Lo todah. He says in his perfect, yet noticeably contrived Israeli accent.

The color drains from the faces of the Israelis as they realize that this American has understood the Hebrew conversations flying rapidly around him. Out of embarrassment, one turns to his American companion and in broken English asks:

• Emmm… where you are from?

He doesn’t quite understand why they are asking.

• What do they know of American geography? He thinks to himself. What are they going to do with the information that he is from Appleton Wisconsin? I live in America and I didn’t know where that was.

But when his companion responds that he is from Wisconsin it strikes a chord with them. The Israelis in four-part harmony serenade them with the theme song from That 70s Show. The party resumes and he is pleased to know that all of the effort he put into learning Hebrew was not in vain.

Eilat, or more specifically, the Red Sea

• Who wants to mikvah? He hears over the blasting music.

He stands up from his seat on the top deck of the party boat. He feels obligated to participate in the mikvah seeing as he was at the center of the shirtlessness controversy. His goal has always been to promote healthy body image messages. He walks down to the bottom deck, hops into the sea and removes his swim trunks. All of a sudden he thinks that he has pushed it too far. He has lost his message. He feels uncomfortable knowing that he is probably making others uncomfortable. That’s not who he is. He creates loving, welcoming environments not alienating spaces. He swims around a little to maintain the image of confidence then puts his shorts back on and returns to the boat. The fifteen-year-old DJ is still jamming on the boat to an original remix of “Total Eclipse of the Heart.” He allows himself to forget about his nudity dilemma.

That One Speaker (and by that I mean most all of the speakers)

He flings his head back into the upright position and quickly checks to see if anyone was looking. He feels bad for the speaker. It’s not the speaker’s fault that the boy only got five hours of sleep that night and four hours, the previous night. He is certain that he would be interested in the subject matter that the speaker is lecturing on.

• What was the subject of this lecture?

He tries desperately to stay awake but when he looks around twelve of his peers are also asleep.

• He says and he closes his eyes once more.

The Last Shabbat

He pulls the knot in the laces of his dress shoes tight and stands up from his bed. Through his open door he sees his friends start to pass, heading outside for the pre-Shabbat photo. He quickly checks to make sure that he has left the bathroom light on for his shomer Shabbat roommates. He leaves the room and runs his fingers through his wet freshly combed hair. He walks down the stairs haphazardly rolling up his sleeves. When he reaches the bottom of the stairs he turns around. He is stopped in his tracks. Sure enough, there she is silhouetted by the pink-red-orange sunset. Immediately he draws the connection between her and Aphrodite. Then subsequently chuckles to himself.

• Five weeks I’ve been learning about Judaism and fostering a connection to my Jewish heritage and still my definition of beauty comes from ancient pagan epics. He thinks to himself.

He knows that he was supposed to come to Israel to focus on studying, but he figures it is Shabbat so maybe its okay to be distracted.

 

 

Shomer Shabbat

Adam Wickham is from New York City. At Stuyvesant High School, he is a costume director for various plays and musicals, a balloon artist, a cartoonist and involved in Model UN. He also works as a Teen Intern at the Jewish Museum.

 

Before Bronfman I never had to confront the idea of living a halakhic or traditionally “Jewish” lifestyle. Even though I live in the shtetl of the Upper West Side, I had personally never felt the need to integrate that much Judaism into my day-to-day life. At my unofficially Christian elementary and middle school, I simply asserted my Jewish identity by not eating pork and quietly changing the words of certain hymns and prayers. When Bronfman began, I got to meet Fellows who have gone to Jewish day schools their entire lives, pray every day, wear kippot, keep Kosher and are Shomer Shabbat. For the first time in my life, I finally got to know people whose observance differs significantly from my own and those close to me.

One example of pluralism among ourselves was how we celebrated Shabbat, and this was reflected by our weekly Shabbat conversations. In these conversations we discussed our adherence to the 39 Melachot (or forbidden actions), in addition to our customs in celebrating the holiday. In my family we bless candles, the grape juice and the challah, eat a candlelit dinner and then often watch Shark Tank on Friday night; then we have a normal Saturday. Among the twenty six of us, our observance of this weekly holiday ranged from nothing special to being halachically observant.

Bronfman set a higher bar for celebrating Shabbat– we went to synagogue, had three celebratory meals, celebrated Havdalah, and created an environment where it was feasible to be Shomer Shabbat. Since we had five Shabbatot, I decided to experiment with each one, as a way to find my own personal meaning. I tried being Shomer Shabbat for one Shabbat, and I also wrote, turned off lights, listened to music and even went in a car, during my other Shabbatot. For the final Shabbat, I was determined to have an especially meaningful one, so I, along with my fellow New Yorker, Antonia, decided to systematically break all thirty nine melachot.

Before Shabbat, Antonia and I made a list of all the melachot and all our ways to break them. In preparation, Antonia bought raw chicken, and I found paper, scissors, needles and thread and a good eraser. After Shabbat dinner, the video camera was ready, and we began. That night we lit and extinguished a candle, built a tent, microwaved some butter, skinned a chicken in the darkness of the meat kitchen, wrote a sentence and then erased it. The next day we picked some fruits, ground them, plowed, planted some seeds, carried and demolished our tent, in addition to some weaving and sewing. Also we had the unfortunate duty of trapping an ant, severing its limbs, and then killing it.

In the true spirit of pluralism, nobody stopped us. Surprisingly even the Shomer Shabbat Fellows often asked us how our project was going, though some were quick to say we were breaking the laws incorrectly. One Modern Orthodox Fellow even remarked that we were giving more thought about the meaning of Shabbat than he normally would. Shabbat is supposed to be a gift of time– set aside from the rest of the week. On Bronfman it was certainly special and distinct for me, and in the future I want to remember the day- whether by observing the laws or not.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Melting into One

Sara Sachs is from Beverly Hills, CA.  She is a recipient of the Aspirations in Computer Science Award given by the National Women Council of Technology. She has presented projects – including a 3D printed prosthetic arm and a virtual reality simulation – at the Consumer Electronic Show. She is a Girls Who Code alumna and founded a Girls Who Code club at her school.

I found the Jewish Peoplehood in the Negev overlooking the craters in Mitzpe Ramon with a tub of ice cream.

Just a little context:  The ice cream was low-cal vanilla and chocolate. Our group had been using coffee stirrers and forks to consume it, but soon our fingers served as surprisingly satisfactory utensils.

But back to the crater overlook — When we arrived, there was a couple already enjoying the view.  We “made a shape” (what we like to call the not-so-circular shapes we often sit in on Bronfman) and they became a part of it.  At some point between learning about the geology of the site and doing yoga, a fellow Fellow offered this couple the tub of ice cream – now less than half full and almost half melted – and they accepted and ate out of it.

For some reason this moment made me so happy.

The Jewish Peoplehood was certainly real if it could double dip together, with seeming strangers.  Overlooking a crater.  In the Negev.