What a rabbinical student thinks when she can't sleep on Friday night

It's nearly 3 a.m. and I'm resisting turning off my lights. I know my mind is not ready to turn off. Classes resume on Sunday, but we returned to school this week and, for the last three days, engaged in dialogue about what coming home is now going to mean. 4 months and another semester seems far away, but as dates fill the calendar and preparations for summer and a move to California become every day discussions it is as if right around the corner from now I will be packing my bags to come home.

This week faculty from our American campus' came to Jerusalem to lead us in a 3-day colloqieum in which we were challenged to start thinking about what awaits us when we return home, now as rabbinic students and future leaders of reform Judaism. The discussions had were a welcomed change to the foundational building classes that take up our day to day during the normal semester. Dont get me wrong, its more than necessary to be building skills in translating Torah and strengthening Hebrew but those are skills needed to help us better communicate and grapple with the source of what for most of us is driven by passion and a belief that there is something beautiful in Judaism. So, we talked about history of our movement and what it means to be Jewish in America and what a future of Jews with less knowledge of Jewish tradition and less time to give when balancing out all our other identities that define us...the groupie, the lawyer, the football fan, the photographer...and we talked about what that means in terms of where we stand today...future rabbis...teachers...chazans....this week I realized...I'm in a seminary that exists because of people who insisted in each generation they came up in that something needed to be changed in order to keep Judaism alive...to keep it vibrant...to keep it hip with the times.

I keep going back and forth between the part of me that is student...here trying to aquiesce skills that will legitimize my rabbinate and put me in a better position to be heard when given a platform on which to stand. The reform movement has a long history of platforms. Things that they stand on...things that they launch from...and they have always been around the themes of change and of reform. First they reformed to be less like the traditional orthodox establishment, and then they reformulated to better define what a Judaism would look like that could stand opposite orthodoxy but not in an inferior way that would lead to dilution but rather ina way that identifies key barriers in the traditional model and finds supplements and ways to rearrange so as to invigorate one's prayer...allow for an influx of creativty...provide channels for which those in need of something a bit more colorful can find their piece of the rainbow.

Then, there is the part of me that has been collecting models of things I like, things that intrigue me, in the forefront of my mind for years. There is part of me who already knows people I want to have conversations with about real ideas i have for real problems that we can get started talking about today...not wait until I'm granted ordination and all of a sudden someone says 'lets begin.' after all, this is supposed to be some sort of calling. really, what person who didn't feel some sort of obligation to a collective good or a greater being would really put themselves in the middle of a career that can not be quantified, challenges people to move beyond the discomfort our present times make us feel in relation to God and religion and find that place in which there is a source of light from which we can grow...and to challenge people to live in their light. come now...if i could really just feed my organization and event planning direction and go on to organize large social and communal events that would involve lots of work, fun and pay...do you really think i'd bring the God and religion piece into my path just for shits and giggles? i think anyone headed in this direction would say they've tried to talk themself out of it at least a few times and there are not days that go by that there are not thoughts of question and bits of doubt as to what legitimizes a person like me to go on to seek a position like rabbi.

i come home from these three days of discussion and i have barrels upon barrels of open questions...and one side of my brain is telling me to make lists of all the things working in my mind and the other side is telling me to clump it all together and write until the sun comes up...feed the creativity...start condensing and focus...dont let the questions linger too long at the risk of losing the spark of creativty that surged such thoughts.

I'm sitting her not knowing if there is a difference between the blog entry one writes when they wake up on friday morning and have the thought of shabbas ahead of them and the entry that comes after three days of intensive discussions about what it will be like to arrive back in america having finished one year of rabbinical school. The perception of friends and family and how they look at you and the perception you have of yourself...wanting to maybe be a bit mor defined than the vulnerable place that will leave you hanging...a year in Israel still to saturate the mind...an anxiousness to move forward rapidly through transition that will result in settling in a new place and moving into the part of the program that demands the foundational stuff we worked on this year in order to enter the application stage and bring our tools to life.

The rabbi who's house I had dinner at tonight said the best thing we can do here, in rabbinical school at HUC is learn how to learn. Have the tools you need to get the answers you need to be abl to go in any direction you need...because in the future you have chosen...that's all you can do for yourself..the rest is unable to be predicted.

My thoughts are jumbled this week. Maybe something in them makes sense...or will soon.