A recent discussion among my rabbinic colleagues dealt with teaching the “choreography of prayer” to teenagers. One respondent mentioned seeing teenagers “rising on one’s toes during the Avot ve-Imahot” and asked from where it came. This led to further comments on how this “rising” seems to be a “misplacement of the choreography of the Kedushah” and (perhaps on the other hand) a “desire for more: more seriousness, more authenticity however imagined” and that sometimes “when we see our young folks experimenting with these and other forms of ‘embodied Judaism’ we panic that they are ‘becoming Orthodox.’” Others suggested more academic explanations of from where in the ancient texts these decisions were made and other historic evidence remembered from grandparents. I offered (a bit farbessert for more public distribution):Oddly enough, the thread ended there.Some of us are comfortable in our bodies; others are not.
Some of us are able to embody our Judaism in every beat of our heart, with each breath of our soul, by every gesture we make, and step we take.
There have been, through the ages, various ways of embodying Judaism.
The entire corpus of halachah offers a structured guide for any body. Some feel this as the weight of a corpse, others as the skeleton that gives form and structure to muscles enabling us to move.
The medieval hassidim embodied their Judaism as they lay in the snow at the thresholds of their synagogues—not to block the entrance but penitently expecting others to trample them.
In early pre-modern times a different group of hassidim left their families and embodied their Judaism by bonding with rebbes through joyous dancing and visits to various spas.
A century ago young Eastern European Jews left their families, made aliyah as halutzim and embodied Judaism with their physical labor—livnot u’lhibanont bah—and (as the legend has it) dance horas around the campfire all night.
In the nineteen sixties many young American Jews embodied their Judaism as they joined R. Abraham Joshua Heschel who said (at one time or another perhaps about his marching in Selma, Alabama with R. Maurice N. Eisendrath): “My feet were praying.”
Now some young Reform Jews in America take a few tentative steps to embody their own Judaism. How did they find this path? Did some body come “from Ramah” modeling it? Did they sit around a campfire talking about how they could go out, into themselves and make the God of Abraham more real in their lives? Did they spend the last moments in their bunks before falling asleep discussing how the body of Sarah could serve as a model for giving birth to a Jewish life filled with laughter?
It seems appropriate that adolescents whose bodies are going through tremendous changes would look for ways to use those bodies to express their religious yearnings.
We do not know in which direction their steps will lead us. However, our task, as rabbis, is not merely to watch in awe and accept. Rather, as we make room for them to walk before us [vis. Genesis 17:1], we are to teach the movements expressed through the organism of our living literature and judge their value and validity from the various chambers of our pulsing hearts.
selected items of interest:
Debbie now has a “Domain of her own…”:
Jews On The Chocolate Trail™
Where in the World are Rabbis Hurvitz and Prinz?
Personal Web pages represent a new phenomenon (for a favorite example (recently experienced an entire transformation) and a wonderful analysis ... you know what to do). Corporate (commercial Web sites) exist to advertise and sell the goods produced by the company. Educational and governmental sites fulfill a similar function. These add a venue for like-minded people to share ideas, a concept growing in a number of corporate sites that serve as the gathering ground for a "community of users." There seems no reason why an individual cannot participate in this process as well. In a sense, my personal Web site fulfills a variety of functions. On the one hand, it is a "vanity" press. On the other hand, it serves as a public repository of materials I make available to various audiences. It is as though I have taken my collected efforts and spread them on a table in the public square. I expect that, in time, some of these pages will require a password (distributed only to family and close friends), but that requires more scripting knowledge than I currently possess.
A special note: This site should not be confused with the commercial site (i.e. ".com") with a similar name.
Nor, should this site be confused with the site called Dafka which (according to it's developer) was rated the number one pro Israel site by Bambili.com (in Israel). I appreciate their efforts, but, I'm not certain I agree with all their positions.
I come by the name Davka.org honestly having been on the editorial board and then the editor of a small journal with that name published by Jewish students in Los Angeles during the 1970s (more on that another time [oops, sorry, link rot, I hope I can track down the article]). I used the English translation of Davka: "Despite Everything" as the title for my editor's column there and then as the title of my column in a variety of synagogue bulletins over the years.
Thank you, Jay, for reminding me.
Some references here to "my" Davka:
- The Davka Portfolio Thirty Years After the World Vanished
- Greetings "from the 'youth'" offered at the annual "Warsaw Ghetto Uprising" commemoration event sponsored by the Jewish Federation-Council of Greater Los Angeles, April 18, 1971, at Temple Israel of Hollywood. (First published in Davka Volume 1, Number 4; Summer 1971.)
And there are (or - in some cases - have been (sorry about "link rot" here, let's try this one and see how long it remains live), indeed, other "Davkas" (here's another) represented on the WWW. (Wow, the word seems to be growing in popularity.)
All of life is an art form. A Web site (sorry again, linkrot) is one particular expression of a life. Some portions of this site (the Haggadah in particular) are designed with their artistic (visual, as well as textual) aspect in mind. Others exist as a weaving of ideas. Among the visual metaphors that come to mind when working on the Web are (of course) the spider's web, and a fisherman's net. Each of these suggest both an interconnectedness of the whole and an ability to capture.
Yet another is the rich tapestry of a weaving (I have searched the Web for a decent site maintained by someone "in honor" of The Weavers [Ronnie Gilbert, Lee Hays, Fred Hellerman and Pete Seeger] and to date [July 14, 1999 - the birthday of Woodie Guthrie] not found one. (The best I can do is a link to a location where you can buy some of The Weavers' recordings.)I do believe that information "wants to be free." (But what about "images"?) I regularly make information available here. (I do produce a paper copy of the Haggadah that families can use at their Sedarim. This costs money. I've noticed that, over the past few years, as more people visit the Haggadah online, fewer people buy it.) I also link to other sites where you can find more. I find it odd that often I'll offer reciprocal links and not have the "favor" returned. While I do indicate that this material is © "copyright" by me (in most instances), I simply request that, if you use what you find here, you let me and others know its source. One of many famous ancient rabbinic statements: "One who quotes an idea in the name of its originator speeds the coming of the messianic age."
Efforts of Earlier College Students
Very little has appeared online that deals with the activities of the Jewish left during the 1960s. I try to make up for that lack here by reporting on what I did with my peers in the Los Angeles area. All of this material, and more, will be available at appropriate archives after I scan and post the material here.
- The Hurvitz Family's Yom Kippur Leaflet calling for an end to the war in Vietnam (1966).
The leaflet (printed on white paper (the color of the scan is not true)) was distributed outside of a number of synagogues in Los Angeles following Yom Kippur services 5727 (1966). the text; a scan of the front of the leaflet; a scan of the back of the leaflet.
"Mom" Faye Hurvitz has been distributing the leaflet once again due to the current (Autumn 2004) political situation in the U. S. in relation to the war in Iraq. It has received nods of recognition for its prescience.- The Conference on Jewish Action held May 9-11, 1969 which served as the organizing meeting of the Jewish Radical Community of Los Angeles.
- Thoughts about the commonality of the struggles of Blacks (African Americans) and Jews during the period. A couple of leaflets of the Jewish Radical Community on the subject:
- American Oppression Divides Black and Jew; the first leaflet of the Jewish Radical Community of Los Angeles (January 5, 1970).
- A comparison of the struggles of Soviet Jewish Prisoner of Conscience Boris Kochubiyevsky and Black Panther Bobby Seale Free Boris Free Bobby; the eighth leaflet of the Jewish Radical Community of Los Angeles (August 7, 1970).
- The text of the People's Peace Treaty distributed by the Jewish Radical Community of Los Angeles. And scans of the pamphlet that accompanied it: The front; the back; supporting materials inside poetry; the a Torah-based case against the war by Rabbi Moshe Adler; continued; and The Vietnam War and the Needs of the Jewish Community.
Resources for Jewish College Students (and others)
I had mentioned a while back the dearth of leaflets for distribution by college students. I've put the together a number of PDF files you can download, duplicate and distribute. (Or, feel free to send the PDF files to others, or link to this page.) For those who want to modify the text, I've added raw text files you can use. This material is "anti-copyright". Please use and distribute.
There are as of this date (Sunday, May 5, 2002) 19 leaflets.
(June 19, 2003):
Thank goodness this has not needed updating in some time. I have ideas for more leaflets, however, the urgency to produce them is not there. One leaflet deals with the "Right of Return" another with the "Palestinians' 'Altalena'" (one approach, another).
I began creating a Web site in my head as early as August 1995 when I drafted the following:
For a project I'm pursuing regarding Jewish involvement on the internet and the World Wide Web in particular, I'm interested in learning about any sites about which you may know. For example, do any rabbis have Home pages? Which synagogues or synagogue organizations have Web sites? Does Marge Piercy have a site at which you can read portions of "He She and It"? Does Howard Rheingold have a site where you can learn more about creating a Virtual [Jewish] Community? Is there a Web Camera at the Kotel? In the Wilderness of Zin?
At the time there existed very little. Since then, All the synagogue movements have developed significant sites as have other Jewish umbrella organizations. The number of synagogues themselves that have sites increases weekly if not daily. At the time, Marge Piercy did not have a site (which surprised me because of her novel), but that has changed. I'm certain that Howard Rheingold did have a site, but I don't remember visiting it (his current site). You can read all of Virtual Community Online, but I don't think Howard is involved in much Jewish thought. (As with me, he does have a Haggadah Online.) There was none then, but now at least one Web camera is aimed at the Kotel. [Their listing here is by no means intended as an endorsement!] One is owned by Aish haTorah and the other is at a commercial site for Virtual Jerusalem at which you need to register before you can visit! Still, no one has set up a camera at Ben Gurion's grave to watch the Wilderness of Zin.
For simple organizational purposes of my own (it is easier for me to store the materials this way) I've divided the area in to the usual six sections. I could have done "Air, Fire, Earth, Water" or some other convention ("scissors, paper, rock"?), but this works for me.
In June of 1999 this Site moved from its home of three or four years at "Computergeeks.com" where it was generously hosted by Joe Kissell and his partner David F. McKee. These gentlemen were made an offer for the name "computergeeks" that they could not refuse and this caused me to establish my own "domain" and find a new server.
[Note: This site is now hosted on Macintosh servers at DigitalStore.]
Now that it is professionally hosted, much of the work I'd done to simplify URLs and clean up the code here, should become easier. If you find them, please let me know so that I can correct them. I have done some work on correcting "linkrot" I know that I have more to do and am concerned about those who have linked to my old site. I am now working on notifying them. As I prepared this site I became aware of portions of it that refer to information that is now outdated. I wonder how to handle this:
- I save the old pages off-line. Periodically I save the entire site archived on disk.
- Should pages have the date of posting as well as the date they were last modified?
I have a graphic that I use on all the printed materials that I produce. I have wanted to use it here as well - for its visually unifying effect. However, I am concerned that others not take it for themselves (and abuse it). "We'll see...."
In early May 2007 I put the graphic at the top of this (and a couple of other) page.Thank you for your patience and support.
This week’s Torah reading (parashah) is: . (Get a PDF....)
My thanks to Joel Hoffman of Lashon.net
© Mark Hurvitz
Last modified December 3, 2007
