Hearts Overflowing -- Shabbat in Jerusalem

i share in YOUR JOY! Sheila

So you're back in Palo Alto? I was hoping we would join you for a Tish'a B'av celebration in the 3rd Beit Hamikdash.... Welcome back, sounds like you had a most inspiring time. Looking forward to benefitting from some of that inspiration..

Dear Sharon and Palo Alto Seven Welcome back to "earth" I feel great joy in knowing how inspiring your Melton Seminar experience was! I felt as if I was with you and appreciated the detailed blog that Sharon lovingly prepared. I look forward to see the photos and hearing more details from each of you. You gave yourself a gift and I share in our joy! Sheila Kay

From Hayim: Dear haverim, Last Thursday night, we held our final dinner of the second session of the summer Israel Seminar, ending their remarkable eleven days of exploring the past, present and future of the Jews in their land, and ending a great journey which we all undertook. The very special aspect of the four seminar groups that took place this summer was that in each group, whether led by Zohar, Jonty, or myself, the participants seem to have undertaken that journey both on a personal and on a group level, entering into individual and collective dialogues about their own connection to Judaism and the Jewish people. If this evaluation is accurate, then we all owe one another a special thanks for helping to bring about so special a learning experience! Both seminars fell in such a manner that the calendar cycle was very much felt by all of us. The second seminar in particular took place in the shadow of the three week mourning period begun towards the end of the first session. Thus, we all found ourselves with a heightened sensitivity to the impact of societal stasis on Jewish history, and I imagine that each of you was moving between past and present all the time, in the awareness that the ancients dealt with their social and ideological tensions no better than we seem to be doing!! It is therefore with the weight of our learning that I am marking this Tisha b'Av here in Jerusalem, challenged by your observations and insights; hopeful that we can think together about the future of the Jewish people and strive to build the decent society that will be a light unto ourselves – and then, maybe, to the nations. Over the coming weeks, every Shabbat will be accompanied by words from that great figure who over two and a half millenia ago gave us words of condemnation – and then words of comfort. Isaiah is read every year just prior to Tisha b'Av, in words that are so scathing and harsh as to make him an outcast and maverick... and then we come back to his divrei Nehama – the comforting – with some of the most magnificent poetry in the Tanakh, that will allow us to move on and regain energies to return to the job of building a better world for ourselves, our people, and our land. I am adding a short extract from one of the blogs by Rav Morey Schwartz, director of curriculum for the Mini-School. Morey posts these every Tuesday, and you may want to check the site for an ongoing commentary by Morey on life in Israel and the manifold ways in which Jewish thought(s) is/are being impacted upon by the realities of moving from the "rivers of Babylon" to "west of the Jordan". Morey's essay was written for the seventeenth of Tammuz, while his latest blog relates to Tisha b'Av. The full story that he relates to is found in your notes and readings from the first Tuesday of your seminar! **** "I [Morey – ed.] conclude with the powerful ending of the story of Bar Kamtza. The Talmud recollects a story of a man who had a bone to pick with the rabbis during the first century C.E. He put them in a tough spot, by bringing forth an animal offering sent on behalf of the Roman Ceasar. Bar Kamtza had quietly inflicted a blemish on the lip of the animal, rendering it unfit for the Temple altar. The rabbis noticed the blemish, and found themselves with a dilemma. If they allowed the calf to be offered, people might misunderstand, and think it’s okay to offer a blemished animal in the Temple. But, if they didn’t offer the animal, they would be accused of treason by the Romans. Although the safety of the Jewish people at the hand of the Roman authorities was in jeopardy, one of the great sages of the generation adamantly refused to budge. The calf was returned, the Caesar heard that his offering had been turned away, and the seige of Jerusalem began. The talmudic passage concludes: Through the humble scrupulousness of Rabbi Zechariah ben Avkulas, our House has been destroyed, our Temple burnt and we ourselves exiled from our land. (Gittin 58a) When will we learn, when will we ever learn……" Taken from: Tisha B'av with Morey See www.ravmorey.wordpress.com May we all have a meaningful Tisha b'Av – and may we all move from the Israel Seminar to even better learning in our respective Mini-Schools and communities! Thank you for joining us this summer. We look forward to hearing from you – and seeing you at the Returnees Seminar of 2009!!! Bivracha, Haim (on behalf of Toby, Zohar, Jonty and Yonatan)