Since my childhood, I have struggled with “Pride.” In Catholicism, pride is a sin—a grave one. And when I was just six years old, a nun implied that I danced dangerously close to committing that grave sin.
I can’t remember what prompted the conversation, but this nun—who was well-meaning, I am sure—warned me not to discuss my academic accomplishments in front of other children, but she warned, too, that I must not earn anything less than an “A” in every class or activity. “God gave you a gift,” she said, “and you shouldn’t waste it. But God didn’t give all the other children the same gift, so you shouldn’t brag.”
I am fairly certain that, at six years old and already fairly self-critical, I had no real notion of the difference between proudly acknowledging my “gifts” and sinfully bragging about them. The conversation left me ashamed of my “natural” abilities and terrified of noting when I had, indeed, worked hard to achieve something. Every hard-earned milestone in reading and writing came to feel like an amazing gift I did not deserve.
Over the past year in Jerusalem, I have learned much about pride from my colleagues in rabbinical school—many of whom seem to have been, like me, self-critical and extremely bright children. One, with whom I share a joy (and I suppose a fear) of “grades,” introduced me to a famous Chasidic teaching. I am sure she did not know she was introducing me to the teaching, and I am positive she knew nothing of how much it has influenced my thinking about the upcoming year at the New York campus.
Here is the story: A Chasidic rabbi taught that a man ought to carry two slips of paper, one in each pocket. “I am but dust and ashes,” one reads; the other, “The world was created for me.”
Perhaps humility, awe, and gratitude are better words than “pride” to describe what this rabbi was getting at. The phrase “I am but dust and ashes” is taken from the story of Abraham confronting God about the plan to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah. Abraham approaches God and God’s power with humility, with an awareness of his humble beginnings and of his mortality. Even in his moment of audaciously challenging God, Abraham knew his limits. We are here temporarily, and we are small. Yet, “The world was created” for each of us. This phrase appears in the Talmud (a long and complex work of rabbinic literature edited around the year 600 CE), and it is part of a longer discussion about Adam, the first human being, and about what it means to be human. Human beings were created from one original creation, Adam, in order to teach all human beings several lessons about our place in the world. For example, we learn that, while human beings use a single stamp to produce many identical coins, God used one image (Adam, created in the image of God) to produce many human beings who are far from identical. The Talmud concludes, “For this reason, every individual must say, the world was created for me.”
I am trying to approach the coming year, and my own studies and growth, with these two pieces of wisdom in mind. I am indeed but dust and ashes, and no matter how clever or accomplished I am, I am but one person trying to approach the world in humility, in awareness of my own limitations. But the world was created for me: I need not sink into self-deprecating despair at my small place in the universe but instead celebrate my uniqueness and indeed take responsibility in the world. If the world was created for me, what I am asked to do in that world? I am not utterly powerless. I have a role to play. And I want to approach the year with gratitude to the One who created this world for me and who created me from dust and ashes.
Thursday, August 20, 2009
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Jubilee
The following was given as my student sermon at the end of the academic year in Jerusalem.
In thirteen days, a voice over a loudspeaker will proclaim: “Now boarding El Al Flight 331 to New York.” My jubilee.
At least, that’s what I first thought when I sat down to write about this week’s parasha, which includes instructions for counting to the Jubilee year. I admit it: I am counting down, and in my mind I’m counting down to “jubilee,” popularly connoting joy and celebration, a translation of the Hebrew yoveil,.
When the ancient Israelites followed the laws of the Jubilee year, what did they do? We heard this morning, V’kidashtem et shnat hachamishim shana u’kratem dror ba’aretz l’chol yoshveha—yoveil hi t’hiyeh lachem –You shall sanctify the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty in the land, unto all its inhabitants: it shall be a yoveil for you.
The Torah instructs us to observe the yoveil by counting seven times seven years, and by blowing the shofar to proclaim the fiftieth year, a year of liberty—d’ror. Any Jew who has sold himself into slavery is released; planting and harvesting cease. Land sold in the previous years reverts to its original owner, and we live on the previous crops, like in the Sabbatical year. As Modern Orthodox commentator Rabbi Shimshon Raphael Hirsch notes, the yoveil year is a leveler: all people become equally dependent on God for their sustenance, from the rich landowner to the poor slave. All are reminded that what we own in this world does not belong to us, but rather, is given by God. We remember that we cannot be slaves to any human master because our only avodah, our only service, is to God.
Most of us aren’t counting out the years to the Jubilee, carefully planning our crops. In the past, the yoveil concretely reminded us that we don’t own this world in which we live. Today, without that concrete returning, what does the yoveil teach us? What does the word itself mean? And how helpful is the contemporary association with release, freedom, jubilee and, indeed, jubilation?
While Rashi tells us yoveil means “ram’s horn,” to symbolize the shofar proclaiming liberty, Ramban wonders, “what sense is there” in declaring that a year “shall be unto you a blowing of a ram’s horn”? Instead, the focus of the yoveil, for him, is the d’ror, the liberty. This freedom is not the shichrur we hear about in the news, hoping for the release of Gilad Shalit, nor the chofesh of vacation. D’ror is a unique word, appearing only this once in the Torah. Brown, Driver, and Briggs translate it as both “a flowing” and as “free run, liberty.” In Jeremiah, a d’ror is a stream, an abundant flow of water, and a d’ror is a swallow, a bird that resists captivity.
The shofar blast announces, then, that we are, each of us, free to flow where the current will take us, free to bear responsibility only to ourselves and to our God—no longer bound, no longer slaves. The yoveil announces this freedom, but, according to Ramban, it also does something else. Yoveil denotes transportation. The word is derived from the root yud-vet-lamed, l’hovil to conduct, to bear along, yuval, to to be transported. The 18th-century commentary MeAm Lo’ez reads this “transportation” literally: things are returned, physically moved. Land reverts to its original owners, slaves return to their ancestral homes. Shimshon Raphael Hirsch digs a bit deeper, saying that the yoveil is a kind of spiritual homecoming, “to bring a person to where he is suited to be, or a thing to whom it really belongs.”
So we’re back to the beginning, then: I will return to where, and to whom, I really belong, in thirteen days, and it will be unto me a yoveil.
But I’m not so sure. Because the yoveil is also about being transported, being carried … but carried to where?
U’kratem dror ba’aretz l’chol yoshveha—yoveil hi t’hiyeh lachem—v’shavtem ish el achuzato v’ish el misphachto tashuvu—and each of you will return to his holding and each of you will return to his family.
The yoveil, after the counting of seven times seven years, in the fiftieth year, an occurrence perhaps as rare in our lives as the word d’ror is rare in the Torah—the yoveil carries us, brings us home. We return to our source, Ramban says, referring to a verse in Jeremiah: Baruch hagever asher yivtach b’adonai, v’haya Adonai mivtacho. V’haya c’eitz shatul al mayim, v’al yuval y’shalach shorashav—“Blessed is the man who trusts in the Eternal, whose trust is the Eternal alone. He shall be like a tree planted by waters, sending forth its roots by a yuval, a stream.” The yoveil promises to return us to our roots, to our nourishing source, to a cool and steady stream.
Where is your source, the place where your roots drink deep? When the shofar proclaims d’ror to all the land, where will the yoveil transport you?
Perhaps the sound of the shofar has already proclaimed d’ror, and the yoveil has carried us to the Year in Israel.
What if this has been our Jubilee year?
D’ror might not be the first word that comes to mind, but what else has this year brought?
It’s brought culture shock, tiskul, dramatic surroundings and spiritual heights. It’s brought moments you’ll remember: your first trip to the Kotel, a sunrise in the desert, and meeting a new friend who has become a lifelong friend. We have lived a unique experience, one intended to nourish our roots and make them stronger.
We have been transported to the land to which Avram migrated, sight unseen, leaving behind his land and his birthplace and his father’s house—the land that became the birthplace of the Jewish people as a people. Whether we criticize it or praise it, Israel remains an origin, the achuzah, the portion or holding that one returns to during the Jubilee year, the achuzah of the Jewish people. However much Hannah Shafir and of course Harrison would be thrilled to hear it, I don’t mean that we should all cancel our return flights and set up permanent homes here. I mean that we will always be linked to this place; our future congregants and students will expect us to have a relationship to Israel as a State, a homeland, or a nation—positive, negative or indifferent—but some kind of relationship. During this Jubilee year, how has Israel served as your achuza?
Or perhaps it has not. Perhaps you’ve learned that your roots are utterly disconnected from this physical place, but they are nourished by Israel in the sense of peoplehood. Our parasha instructs us, v’ish el misphachto tashuvu, each of you will return to his family. Our community can strive to be for one another a mishpacha of colleagues. And we can continue to engage with Hebrew, the language of the Jewish mishpacha.
Yoveil comes from the verb l’hovil: to bring, to bear, to carry. I don’t know about you, but I was carried here—carried here by Judaism, faith, career goals, idealism… and, sure, carried here (somewhat unwillingly) by HUC. We have been brought, and we have brought with us our histories, our knowledge, our ignorance, our faith, and our doubt. I sincerely challenge each of us to recognize that this year has indeed served as a yoveil, a return to origins, a release into a year of introspection, study, and relationship to God, Israel, and the Jewish community. I have been carried to Israel, but I hope and pray that I have also been transported—transported to a new understanding of what it means to live a Jewish life, transported and transformed.
After all, we won’t get a chance like this for another forty-nine years.
In thirteen days, a voice over a loudspeaker will proclaim: “Now boarding El Al Flight 331 to New York.” My jubilee.
At least, that’s what I first thought when I sat down to write about this week’s parasha, which includes instructions for counting to the Jubilee year. I admit it: I am counting down, and in my mind I’m counting down to “jubilee,” popularly connoting joy and celebration, a translation of the Hebrew yoveil,.
When the ancient Israelites followed the laws of the Jubilee year, what did they do? We heard this morning, V’kidashtem et shnat hachamishim shana u’kratem dror ba’aretz l’chol yoshveha—yoveil hi t’hiyeh lachem –You shall sanctify the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty in the land, unto all its inhabitants: it shall be a yoveil for you.
The Torah instructs us to observe the yoveil by counting seven times seven years, and by blowing the shofar to proclaim the fiftieth year, a year of liberty—d’ror. Any Jew who has sold himself into slavery is released; planting and harvesting cease. Land sold in the previous years reverts to its original owner, and we live on the previous crops, like in the Sabbatical year. As Modern Orthodox commentator Rabbi Shimshon Raphael Hirsch notes, the yoveil year is a leveler: all people become equally dependent on God for their sustenance, from the rich landowner to the poor slave. All are reminded that what we own in this world does not belong to us, but rather, is given by God. We remember that we cannot be slaves to any human master because our only avodah, our only service, is to God.
Most of us aren’t counting out the years to the Jubilee, carefully planning our crops. In the past, the yoveil concretely reminded us that we don’t own this world in which we live. Today, without that concrete returning, what does the yoveil teach us? What does the word itself mean? And how helpful is the contemporary association with release, freedom, jubilee and, indeed, jubilation?
While Rashi tells us yoveil means “ram’s horn,” to symbolize the shofar proclaiming liberty, Ramban wonders, “what sense is there” in declaring that a year “shall be unto you a blowing of a ram’s horn”? Instead, the focus of the yoveil, for him, is the d’ror, the liberty. This freedom is not the shichrur we hear about in the news, hoping for the release of Gilad Shalit, nor the chofesh of vacation. D’ror is a unique word, appearing only this once in the Torah. Brown, Driver, and Briggs translate it as both “a flowing” and as “free run, liberty.” In Jeremiah, a d’ror is a stream, an abundant flow of water, and a d’ror is a swallow, a bird that resists captivity.
The shofar blast announces, then, that we are, each of us, free to flow where the current will take us, free to bear responsibility only to ourselves and to our God—no longer bound, no longer slaves. The yoveil announces this freedom, but, according to Ramban, it also does something else. Yoveil denotes transportation. The word is derived from the root yud-vet-lamed, l’hovil to conduct, to bear along, yuval, to to be transported. The 18th-century commentary MeAm Lo’ez reads this “transportation” literally: things are returned, physically moved. Land reverts to its original owners, slaves return to their ancestral homes. Shimshon Raphael Hirsch digs a bit deeper, saying that the yoveil is a kind of spiritual homecoming, “to bring a person to where he is suited to be, or a thing to whom it really belongs.”
So we’re back to the beginning, then: I will return to where, and to whom, I really belong, in thirteen days, and it will be unto me a yoveil.
But I’m not so sure. Because the yoveil is also about being transported, being carried … but carried to where?
U’kratem dror ba’aretz l’chol yoshveha—yoveil hi t’hiyeh lachem—v’shavtem ish el achuzato v’ish el misphachto tashuvu—and each of you will return to his holding and each of you will return to his family.
The yoveil, after the counting of seven times seven years, in the fiftieth year, an occurrence perhaps as rare in our lives as the word d’ror is rare in the Torah—the yoveil carries us, brings us home. We return to our source, Ramban says, referring to a verse in Jeremiah: Baruch hagever asher yivtach b’adonai, v’haya Adonai mivtacho. V’haya c’eitz shatul al mayim, v’al yuval y’shalach shorashav—“Blessed is the man who trusts in the Eternal, whose trust is the Eternal alone. He shall be like a tree planted by waters, sending forth its roots by a yuval, a stream.” The yoveil promises to return us to our roots, to our nourishing source, to a cool and steady stream.
Where is your source, the place where your roots drink deep? When the shofar proclaims d’ror to all the land, where will the yoveil transport you?
Perhaps the sound of the shofar has already proclaimed d’ror, and the yoveil has carried us to the Year in Israel.
What if this has been our Jubilee year?
D’ror might not be the first word that comes to mind, but what else has this year brought?
It’s brought culture shock, tiskul, dramatic surroundings and spiritual heights. It’s brought moments you’ll remember: your first trip to the Kotel, a sunrise in the desert, and meeting a new friend who has become a lifelong friend. We have lived a unique experience, one intended to nourish our roots and make them stronger.
We have been transported to the land to which Avram migrated, sight unseen, leaving behind his land and his birthplace and his father’s house—the land that became the birthplace of the Jewish people as a people. Whether we criticize it or praise it, Israel remains an origin, the achuzah, the portion or holding that one returns to during the Jubilee year, the achuzah of the Jewish people. However much Hannah Shafir and of course Harrison would be thrilled to hear it, I don’t mean that we should all cancel our return flights and set up permanent homes here. I mean that we will always be linked to this place; our future congregants and students will expect us to have a relationship to Israel as a State, a homeland, or a nation—positive, negative or indifferent—but some kind of relationship. During this Jubilee year, how has Israel served as your achuza?
Or perhaps it has not. Perhaps you’ve learned that your roots are utterly disconnected from this physical place, but they are nourished by Israel in the sense of peoplehood. Our parasha instructs us, v’ish el misphachto tashuvu, each of you will return to his family. Our community can strive to be for one another a mishpacha of colleagues. And we can continue to engage with Hebrew, the language of the Jewish mishpacha.
Yoveil comes from the verb l’hovil: to bring, to bear, to carry. I don’t know about you, but I was carried here—carried here by Judaism, faith, career goals, idealism… and, sure, carried here (somewhat unwillingly) by HUC. We have been brought, and we have brought with us our histories, our knowledge, our ignorance, our faith, and our doubt. I sincerely challenge each of us to recognize that this year has indeed served as a yoveil, a return to origins, a release into a year of introspection, study, and relationship to God, Israel, and the Jewish community. I have been carried to Israel, but I hope and pray that I have also been transported—transported to a new understanding of what it means to live a Jewish life, transported and transformed.
After all, we won’t get a chance like this for another forty-nine years.
Monday, April 20, 2009
The Call
When we sing, “Next year in Jerusalem” at the end of our Passover seder, we’re not really talking about Jerusalem. We’re singing our longing, God’s promise, and our hope for a better future, a time of peace and completion, wholeness, shalom.
After sharing seder with a warm and generous Israeli family on a kibbutz near Ashkelon, I traveled to Barcelona for the rest of my vacation, meeting Rachel for some much-needed time together. The modernisme architecture, World’s Fair grounds and buildings, and Gothic streets provided countless diversions and amusements; contemporary art exhibits around the city and the “Blue Period” works in the Picasso museum sparked thoughts and discussions. And the narrow streets of the Jewish Quarter, nearly indistinguishable from other narrow streets in the winding alleyways of the old Roman city, changed how I will sing “Next Year in Jerusalem” at future seders.
Spain’s once-thriving Jewish population, a large group in the city of Barcelona, living mostly alongside their Christian neighbors but in a close-knit community (the “kahal, a Hebrew word we still use today) and geographical area known as “The Call”>, faced persecution and eventually expulsion at the hands of Spain’s Catholic rulers. This is far from a story of redemption; rather, it is one of desperation and mourning—an entire community forced to convert, to migrate, to leave behind a rich culture, personal networks, lives they had built over centuries. The only trace of Jewish life in Spain that Rachel and I could find were a few doorposts marked in places where a mezuzah had once been affixed, some inscriptions along the walls of buildings that now house souvenir shops and clothing stores, and the remains of a 12-th century synagogue that now serves as a museum.
Unlike Barcelona’s Church tours, which focus on art, architecture, and history, the synagogue and museum also explains religion, outlining major Jewish practices and festivals for the non-Jewish tourist. Sadly, I am not sure how many of those the museum gets. When we walked in, the guide immediately asked us if we spoke Hebrew, and later that same day we ran into an Israeli tour group learning about the fraught and tragic history of our people in Spain and crowding together in the alleyways to imagine rather than see vibrant Jewish life in Barcelona.
Touching the stones of these former houses where people celebrated Passover and baked their Shabbat challah, I felt a sense of responsibility, as a Jew and as a future rabbi, to the memory of this community, but more so to Jewish communities around the world. It’s a feeling I never really internalized before, but I imagined what it might have meant, in medieval times, to be forced out of your village somewhere in the mountains, to reach the city of Barcelona, and to know that all you had to do was find the Call, and with it you would find open arms, a hot meal, a place to stay, an invitation to Shabbos dinner.
Later in the week, we visited another Jewish Quarter, in the city of Girona. Similarly, its museum, housed in what was once a major Girona synagogue, not only outlined the history of the Jewish community in Girona and in Spain, but also explained major Jewish beliefs, practices, and philosophies. The streets were narrow, and I could imagine the terrible days of being confined to just two streets with their intertwining courtyards, dead ends, and shallow stairs. Photographs of a nearby palace showed how Jewish cemeteries were raided, their carved stones used as building materials for new, Christian communities.
For the most part, I spent my time in the Jewish Quarters in contemplation—not in overwhelming or debilitating grief, though I certainly felt a sadness for a community that has all but disappeared. And then Friday afternoon came, and sunset approached, and it was time for Shabbat.
The progressive synagogue in Barcelona is not located on the nicest of the Gracia neighborhood’s streets. A metal grate covers the door until just before services begin, revealing curtained windows and a small mezuzah. But inside, it’s Jerusalem.
It was Kabbalat Shabbat at Bet Shalom. Greeting us warmly with a “Shabbat Shalom” and a kiss on each check, the dedicated members of this small but warm and welcoming kahal eagerly spoke with us (in broken Spanish, Hebrew, and English, and with much patience all around) about where we’re from, our visit, our synagogues, and my studies at HUC. Rabbi Jim Glazier, serving the community on his sabbatical from his home congregation in Vermont, graciously invited me to light the Shabbat candles and say the blessing, a great honor. The melodies were familiar, the cantor’s voice and presence were smooth and prayerful, the faces were bright and smiling, the mood in the room was enveloping, open, inviting. After the prayer, we chatted with Spanish, Catalonian, Italian, American, French—I can’t even count all the places of origin—members and visitors, students on their year abroad, families, friends. Rosina Levy, who helped us organize our visit, introduced us to members of the community, translated, learned about our lives, told us about the community’s activities, and generally did much to create a warm atmosphere. Suddenly, several people started setting up tables in the center of the room, and we found ourselves sitting down to a very late dinner (a Catalonian tradition), prepared by a member of the community. People lingered, talking and laughing, eating and drinking (we passed on the shots of Tequila!), sharing stories.
The Jewish Quarter in the old city of Barcelona thrives, but as a commercial center and a tourist destination. The people who live over its storefronts do not light Shabbat candles or bake challah. But in Gracia, a progressive community of Jews, mostly praying without a full-time rabbi, creates a kahal to which all Jews are welcome. They are making Judaism live and continue and thrive in a place that once saw crushing prejudice and mass destruction. They are making each Shabbat, each holiday, each community gathering a fulfillment of the promise of redemption and wholeness, completion and shalom.
After sharing seder with a warm and generous Israeli family on a kibbutz near Ashkelon, I traveled to Barcelona for the rest of my vacation, meeting Rachel for some much-needed time together. The modernisme architecture, World’s Fair grounds and buildings, and Gothic streets provided countless diversions and amusements; contemporary art exhibits around the city and the “Blue Period” works in the Picasso museum sparked thoughts and discussions. And the narrow streets of the Jewish Quarter, nearly indistinguishable from other narrow streets in the winding alleyways of the old Roman city, changed how I will sing “Next Year in Jerusalem” at future seders.
Spain’s once-thriving Jewish population, a large group in the city of Barcelona, living mostly alongside their Christian neighbors but in a close-knit community (the “kahal, a Hebrew word we still use today) and geographical area known as “The Call”>, faced persecution and eventually expulsion at the hands of Spain’s Catholic rulers. This is far from a story of redemption; rather, it is one of desperation and mourning—an entire community forced to convert, to migrate, to leave behind a rich culture, personal networks, lives they had built over centuries. The only trace of Jewish life in Spain that Rachel and I could find were a few doorposts marked in places where a mezuzah had once been affixed, some inscriptions along the walls of buildings that now house souvenir shops and clothing stores, and the remains of a 12-th century synagogue that now serves as a museum.
Unlike Barcelona’s Church tours, which focus on art, architecture, and history, the synagogue and museum also explains religion, outlining major Jewish practices and festivals for the non-Jewish tourist. Sadly, I am not sure how many of those the museum gets. When we walked in, the guide immediately asked us if we spoke Hebrew, and later that same day we ran into an Israeli tour group learning about the fraught and tragic history of our people in Spain and crowding together in the alleyways to imagine rather than see vibrant Jewish life in Barcelona.
Touching the stones of these former houses where people celebrated Passover and baked their Shabbat challah, I felt a sense of responsibility, as a Jew and as a future rabbi, to the memory of this community, but more so to Jewish communities around the world. It’s a feeling I never really internalized before, but I imagined what it might have meant, in medieval times, to be forced out of your village somewhere in the mountains, to reach the city of Barcelona, and to know that all you had to do was find the Call, and with it you would find open arms, a hot meal, a place to stay, an invitation to Shabbos dinner.
Later in the week, we visited another Jewish Quarter, in the city of Girona. Similarly, its museum, housed in what was once a major Girona synagogue, not only outlined the history of the Jewish community in Girona and in Spain, but also explained major Jewish beliefs, practices, and philosophies. The streets were narrow, and I could imagine the terrible days of being confined to just two streets with their intertwining courtyards, dead ends, and shallow stairs. Photographs of a nearby palace showed how Jewish cemeteries were raided, their carved stones used as building materials for new, Christian communities.
For the most part, I spent my time in the Jewish Quarters in contemplation—not in overwhelming or debilitating grief, though I certainly felt a sadness for a community that has all but disappeared. And then Friday afternoon came, and sunset approached, and it was time for Shabbat.
The progressive synagogue in Barcelona is not located on the nicest of the Gracia neighborhood’s streets. A metal grate covers the door until just before services begin, revealing curtained windows and a small mezuzah. But inside, it’s Jerusalem.
It was Kabbalat Shabbat at Bet Shalom. Greeting us warmly with a “Shabbat Shalom” and a kiss on each check, the dedicated members of this small but warm and welcoming kahal eagerly spoke with us (in broken Spanish, Hebrew, and English, and with much patience all around) about where we’re from, our visit, our synagogues, and my studies at HUC. Rabbi Jim Glazier, serving the community on his sabbatical from his home congregation in Vermont, graciously invited me to light the Shabbat candles and say the blessing, a great honor. The melodies were familiar, the cantor’s voice and presence were smooth and prayerful, the faces were bright and smiling, the mood in the room was enveloping, open, inviting. After the prayer, we chatted with Spanish, Catalonian, Italian, American, French—I can’t even count all the places of origin—members and visitors, students on their year abroad, families, friends. Rosina Levy, who helped us organize our visit, introduced us to members of the community, translated, learned about our lives, told us about the community’s activities, and generally did much to create a warm atmosphere. Suddenly, several people started setting up tables in the center of the room, and we found ourselves sitting down to a very late dinner (a Catalonian tradition), prepared by a member of the community. People lingered, talking and laughing, eating and drinking (we passed on the shots of Tequila!), sharing stories.
The Jewish Quarter in the old city of Barcelona thrives, but as a commercial center and a tourist destination. The people who live over its storefronts do not light Shabbat candles or bake challah. But in Gracia, a progressive community of Jews, mostly praying without a full-time rabbi, creates a kahal to which all Jews are welcome. They are making Judaism live and continue and thrive in a place that once saw crushing prejudice and mass destruction. They are making each Shabbat, each holiday, each community gathering a fulfillment of the promise of redemption and wholeness, completion and shalom.
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