Blog Elul: Hope

Hope is the light at the end of a tunnel.
Hope is the smile in a sea of frowns.
Hope is the music that floats in my window in hour four of my homework.
Hope is the thing with feathers.
Hope is what was left in the bottom of Pandora's box.
Hope never leaves.
We may forget about it. Make ourselves believe that it isn't there.
It there it will stay. Just hanging around, under all of the guilt, discord, and doubt.
Ready to come out and fly away.

Blog Elul: Begin

Rosh Hashanah is the beginning of the year. I've always liked it better than the Gregorian new year because Rosh Hashanah is actually at the beginning of my year. Sure, i've been at school for a bit, but it still feels like the dust hasn't settled so much on the year to come yet. But really any time can be a beginning if you decide to define it as one. The beginning of each day is a new start and one can make a conscious decision to live one's life anyway they please.

Beginnings, while exciting, also contain a lot of uncertainty, and there is very little I dislike more than uncertainty. But I am confident that this next year will bring happiness and sadness and love and trust and a myriad of other things that I cannot even imagine. And I'm looking forward to it.

Blog Elul: End

I really hate endings. I hated leaving camp--I basically cried for the last 48 hours. I hated leaving school in the spring. But the end of this year feels a whole lot more like a beginning that it does an ending. The ending of this year allows me to think back to the beginnings of so many important relationships and to think about how I will strengthen them and myself in the coming year. The ending of this year means that at some point I will be able to stop worrying about High Holiday logistics. The ending of this year means the beginning of the next. And I get to bring in the next year with my best friends. The people who I feel like I can avoid endings with. With whom it will always be see you later instead of good-bye. And that's a blessing. With endings come beginnings. And both require the same blessing.

Blog Elul: Love

Love. One word that means so much.

A command. From God and from social pressures.

An emotion. Felt towards individuals and group.

The warmth one feels after making a new friend.

The fire while discussing Torah on Shabbos morning. 

The tight hug of a family member.

Love is complicated. It can cloud our judgment.

Cause us to act too selfishly. And also not selfishly enough.

Cause us to spend more time on things irrational.

But love isn't supposed to make sense.

Love is important.

It helps us breath.

Through pain and through joy.

It's refreshing and hopeful.

And with it, we couldn't live without.

Blog Elul: Fulfill

One of the greatest mitzvot(commandments) that Jews are to fulfill is "laasok b'divrei torah," which is defined as "to engage with the words of Torah." Now, many rabbis and people much smarter than me have different interpretations of how one goes about fulfilling this commandment, and I honestly think that I forgot how to fulfill this mitzvah until the other night.

Yesterday, at my rabbi's suggestion, I began studying Jewish text on my own, specifically Psalms because she thought they would bring me comfort. Directly after spending a bit of time studying by myself, I joined some friends in our house of study (Beit Midrash) to learn about the Torah portion for the week. Walking out of that building, late at night, I felt different than I had in a long time. I felt alive and filled with the words of my tradition, and the world, my stress about everything going on in my life had melted away if only for a short moment. And I was reminded of why I love being Jewish and why I want to grow up and be a professional Jew.

Blog Elul:Judge

I am an INFJ. I'm proud of it. But I'm not proud of how judgmental I can be. My initial instinct is always to judge someone on the clothes that they are wearing or the way they talk, but that's not the way to a successful life. I started out by just not saying those things out loud, but now, now I have trained my brain to stop judging, at least for the most part. And that's something I can be proud of.

Blog Elul: Ask

We all ask similar questions. Why are we here? Who are we? How do we make meaningful use of our limited time on this earth? Is there a God? Does that God require something of us? What do we worship? 

But we answer these questions in different ways. With science and religion. Or a combination of the two. We don't debate as to whether these challenges exist. We know that they do. We argue over how they are addressed, and that is an entirely different issue.