A Regular Week of Classes and JET

This week has been fairly ordinary and I don't really have too much to write about. Much of my time was consumed by a video that I was making for Hagalil USY's Leadership Training Institute this weekend. The video can be seen here. The people being interviewed are all Hagalilers (I'm the one doing the interviewing). I also edited all of the interviews, made everything pretty, wrote the credits and put in the music. It was a lot of work but it's rewarding to see the finished product. A lot of Nativers were doing freshman writing work every night this week (their final essays are due long before mine because I started the class later due to MDA training). Rachel spent hours in my room typing up her paper one night (sorry Rachel, it's a weak shoutout, but it's the best I could do under the circumstances).

Tuesday night was Erev Nativ and we heard from Rabbi Bradley Artsen, Dean of the Ziegler Rabbinical School of the American Jewish University in Los Angeles. I knew that I disagreed with many tenets of "West Coast" Conservative Judaism, but I couldn't express it concretely. Rabbi Artson seems like a really nice guy but I disagree with most of his beliefs. He seemed to be expressing religious naturalism - one of Mordechai Kaplan's (the founder of Reconstructionist Judaism) main beliefs. He argued against an omni-everything God, and instead believes in God existing in the world around us, particularly in science. He said that today's Judaism is heavily influenced by Platonic concepts (forgive the super-Jew digression: I pointed out that it has been for a long time, specifically citing the anti-anthropomorphic views of the Targum Onkelos having been influenced by a belief in an omnipotent God, but he said that many classical sources should be accepted, but looked at through his lens) and that that makes God inaccessible. It seems that he means well in his intentions, but I think he gets too far away from the basics of Judaism without justifying the departure. His arguments make me worried about the future of Conservative Judaism and caused me to lose respect for the Ziegler School as a whole. It's one thing to make Judaism more accessible, to dilute it is quite another.

Last night a lot of my friends went to a Hapoel Yerushalaim basketball game, but I had signed up for Jewish Educator Training (JET) long before Nativ told us about the game so I headed down to level -3 for a two hour session with Mark Lazar about teaching Hebrew School. I learned more then I thought I would, and I'm excited to keep going.

Today is Adina's birthday so Yom Huledet Sameach Adina! We'll be celebrating later tonight, though Joey (my phillies phan phriend) and I will need to watch the game at 2 am tonight. Joey and I have a bet going on the Series. If the Yankees win, he needs to shave an NY into the back of his head. Conversely, if the Phillies win, I need to shave a P into the back of my head. I haven't given much thought to the Yankees losing, because they will obviously win, but even if they do lose, I've been needing a haircut.

That's about it for now - talk to you soon,
Seffi