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March 20, 2020 | 24 Adar 5780
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Hebrew College Brings Leadership, Learning, and Love to this Uncertain Time
We hope you, your families, and your friends are safe and healthy and finding support, strength, and connection amidst the challenges and uncertainties of this complicated time. Our online tefillah and classes are underway (just look at this week's Zoom tefillah in the photo above), and our community is coming together virtually. For those who did not see President Rabbi Sharon Cohen Anisfeld's March 17 email update, we encourage you to read it here.
In her update, President Anisfeld announced that, while we will be unable to gather in person for this year's Hebrew College Annual Spring Event Leadership, Learning, and Love on April 29, we are planning an inspiring series of virtual programs over the coming months to celebrate our honoree, Rabbi Rim Meirowitz, and our Esther Award recipient, Jill Segal of blessed memory. Stay tuned for more information and please continue to hold April 29 for one of the programs in our virtual series.
In response to this extraordinary moment, we are seeing an outpouring of leadership, learning, and love from our alumni, faculty, students, and staff as well as partners at CJP as they offer support, creativity, new online community learning opportunities, and Torah for the mind and spirit. We are pleased to share a small sampling of this Torah and tefillah below in addition to an excerpt from our new Hebrew College Passover Companion. We encourage you to share this issue and its contents with friends, family, and others in your community in need of connection and comfort.
With prayers for good health,
The News & Views Editorial Team
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Enough is Enough Parashat Vayakhel (Exodus 35:1-38:20)
By Rabbi Sharon Cohen Anisfeld, President of Hebrew College
First, a confession. I am among those already exhausted by the amount of time I am now spending in front of a screen, rather than in the physical presence of other human beings.
Please don’t get me wrong.
I am grateful—deeply and daily—for the technology that is allowing us to stay connected to one another during this period of “social distancing” and to overcome, at least a little, the heightened sense of isolation and anxiety that can come with it.
I am grateful—deeply and daily—for the abundance of generosity and good will with which I see people everywhere undertaking the tremendous effort to, suddenly, strangely, learn to live so much of our lives online. To work, to meet, to study, to pray, to care for each other, to sing (I am particularly touched by the number of emails I’ve seen from people trying to find a way to sing together in this new virtual reality).
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The Hardness and Brilliance of Waiting
By Rabbi Jordan Braunig, Rab`14, Tufts University Hillel
I spoke with my grandmother on the phone earlier this week. I said to her, “In all my life, I’ve never encountered a moment quite like this.” She laughed, “In all your life! I’m 96, with a little more life lived than you, and I’ve never seen anything like it.”
I held that perspective, as I did quite a bit of listening of my own this week. I listened with a sense that no one had really experienced this before...
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Karpas
By Rabbi Sharon Cohen Anisfeld, President of Hebrew College
"Karpas promises that the renewal unfolding in the world around us will come just as insistently to our own lives, to the places that have frozen over in our own weary and wary hearts. Even in the darkest times and narrowest places, there is a song in our souls waiting to well up again."
At this overwhelming moment for our community and our world, we invite you to listen to an excerpt of Hebrew College President Rabbi Sharon Cohen Anisfeld reading Karpas, a piece she wrote for our new Hebrew College Passover Companion—a collection of essays dedicated to longtime esteemed faculty member Judith Kates and edited by Rachel Adelman, Jane L. Kanarek, and Gail Twersky Reimer. The Passover Companion is now available to read online or for purchase.
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A Post-Coronial World
By Rabbi Arthur Green, Hebrew College Rector
Indeed, what strange times we are living through! I keep feeling like I’ve somehow gotten caught up in the plot of a B movie, and that any minute Will Smith and some genius Israel teenager will rush onto the screen with the newly discovered antidote—and save the world. Maybe that will still happen, of course, and the film just hasn’t gone on long enough for the resolution to unfold. Oy! Will someone please tell the Director up there that this plot is beginning to drag?
I am writing you from Jerusalem, where I have been spending the winter, now ever so slowly turning into early spring. I love this city, where I have so many dear friends and fond memories; I consider it a sort of second home. In some symbolic corner of my mind, I still think of this place as the heart of the world.
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Accepting the Yoke
By Naomi Gurtz Lind, Hebrew College rabbinical student
Every morning, the liturgy invites us anew to imitate the angels by taking on על מלכות שמים (the yoke of Gd’s sovereignty). At Hebrew College we have a custom of looking around at one another at that moment and making eye contact. It is one of the most meaningful parts of my tefillah, and returning to those people today—even quivering on a screen—for that moment felt like coming home, even though I was home.
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The Work of Our Hands
By Shani Rosenbaum, Hebrew College rabbinical student
What experts have been saying, over and over, is the best thing to do to stop the spread of the virus…is do less. In particular, when it comes to our hands. We are told to keep our hands off our faces, away from our mouths, away from others. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.
It is so hard for me—particularly in a moment of stress—to do less with my hands. But lately I am wondering if there isn’t an enormous spiritual opportunity here—to look our fear in the eye and practice letting go, like we do each Shabbat.
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Hebrew College Offers Virtual Community Courses For This Moment As our lives have moved online during these challenging days, we invite you to come together virtually to delve into new ideas, nurture your mind and spirit, and find joy and inspiration through Jewish learning. Hebrew College is collaborating with CJP to provide free, one-hour online adult learning experiences on a range of dynamic Jewish topics. Join us on Zoom to learn from 12 outstanding Hebrew College faculty members and rabbinical students from the Greater Boston community. Sessions include:
- Have You Made Art About It?: Responding to Our Current Circumstances With Art and Soul
- People of the (Comic) Book: How American Jews Created a New Form of Entertainment and Infused It With Jewish Conte
- Like They Did in Egypt: Jewish Queerish Histories & Possibilities
Read course descriptions. Classes will begin this week and will be offered during the day and evening, via the CJP website. We hope you will take advantage of these adult learning opportunities to build community and connection during these uncertain times.
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