Hey Holy Bnai Yisrael! I hope everyone is feeling the elevated lightness of post-Yom Kippur and the anticipatory energy of Sukkot. As Bein ha-Zmanim (intersession) arrived, a group of us have committed to a significant greening of the campus, through a winter vegetable garden, herb garden and setting infrastructure to recycle our used shower-waters into fruit trees.
A crop of kale, chard, lettuce, cilantro, beets, broccoli and spinach should b'ezrat Hashem, soon be adorning our campus. We've been shuttling around Gush Etzion, shoveling compost and manure to enrich our soils, researching local vegetation to find erosion-preventing shrubs and spending every free moment putting up the yeshiva sukkah. We're doing our best to use all the environmentally friendly technology we can to make the land bloom and produce for ourselves.
As Yom Kippur faded, with everyone's proclamation that the Elokim who is the focus of our religious practice and living experience is the same as the Ultimate Divine Ein Sof expressed by the name Ha' vaya, I felt a spiritual ecstasy of group consciousness. Hashem is Elokim, a simple everyday reality- but also a release for the pressures that the Torah places on us mortals. I mean, sure my soul longs only to be close to God, but the reason WE got the Torah and NOT the angels is because we have earthly physical desires and tendencies. Herein lies the connection between Yom Kippur and our Reception of the Torah, the second set of the Ten Commandments. Torah belongs to us human becomings, creatures of earthly origin with divine aspirations and the conflict that creates. I spent a lot of my davening on Yom Kippur explaining to God how intensely hard it is to focus on the divine when this world has become so rooted in a anthropocentric (God is dead) type ideology. Even "a desire to be close to God" is not admired as a goal in modern society (unless, of course, it is couched as "MY spiritual experience). So, Hashem, when I fell from the level of neshamah this last year and sinned, understand that that is coming from the nature of this world and it's problems, and I would love to be able to live a higher spiritual life, and be a part of a world society that fostered that kind of growth and let that be the clarity of mind that is locked in through Neilah...
As the new year sets in, may we be blessed to hold on to the awareness of Divine and impressed at our ability to manifest Divine will in our daily doings, starting with the building of the sukkah, and the purchasing/harvesting of our 4 species. We should never have to judge another Jew and we should see the end of the pains to our people and land. Here's to sowing seeds of truth and righteousness in 5764.
Shaul David Judelman
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Shaul David Judelman currently resides in Jerusalem. After growing up amongst the Douglas Firs of Seattle, Washington, he came to Israel on a quest for Judaism alive in its land. He spent six years in the Bat Ayin Yeshiva Rabbinical program and now teaches at Yeshivat Simchat Shlomo while working on several different environmental initiatives in Jerusalem. He is the founder and coordinator of Simchat Shlomo’s Eco-Activist Beit Midrash, a program offering holistic in-depth Torah study around issues of ecology. |