There are few things that truly make me upset.  The biggest is ignorance.

“…she [Anne Frank] died three days before the camp was liberated, it makes me ill.  They knew the liberation was coming and they still went to the gas chamers?!”

~A Patron after the show

Ok, so you sit through two-and-a-half hours of a wonderful production of The Diary of Anne Frank in Salt Lake City, UT and this is what I hear people saying as they leave the theatre.  Go figure.

Go figure also that this comment came from a woman who looked to possibly have been old enough to at least have been born shortly after the war, it would seem to me that someone of that generation should have a little more understanding of what went on.

It amazes me how many people are just completely ignorant of the things that happened during World War II, especially people who are my age or older.  Are events from less than 100 years ago so quickly forgotten all the time?  Did people not learn about this in school like I did?  Does world history not get taught as thoroughly when you move this far west in this country?  Seriously.  Is Utah just that sheltered?

I can’t imagine that all of those things are true or that this is an isolated case.  Mostly because I know that when the show was being produced in Indiana they received similar remarks and questions there.  I will be very intrigued to hear the talkback after the student matinee on Wednesday.

I am having a hard time forming coherent thoughts, can you tell….

This is a period of history that I am sure that many people would love to forget, but it is something that we never should forget.  Sure, it didn’t happen here, in the United States, but it happened.  Even more forgotten is the fact that it almost did happen here, with the Japanese.  How does it come to pass that over a span of over 10 years the world was plagued with some of the grossest violations of human rights that have ever been seen.  How can we combat the continuing threats of genocide in other parts of the world today when we can’t even remember one of the biggest?  Why is it that people just don’t seem to understand history.

I grew up going to religious school, “Hebrew school” as we called it.  I was taught there about the Holocaust.  In public school we read books like The Diary of Anne Frank, Number the Stars, and The Devil’s Arithmetic.  I know some kids who even read Ellie Wiesel and Schindler’s List in high school.  I am pretty sure that at some point in my public school career we watched Schindler’s List.  All of this is grounds for not only a great English class, but for great history classes as well.  Anne Frank was 13 years old when she was writing, and her words were more powerful and better written than many modern published authors.  She wrote a perspective on the war that we see very little of.  Most books and movies focus on the ghettos, the concentration camps and the war itself.  This look at a life of hiding, waiting, never being able to get away from the people you live with is just so different.  It also shows that despite some of the darkest times in our history, there is still some light.

The other day a colleague asked me how watching this play made me feel, did it make me upset, is it hard to watch every night?  In all honesty, no, it isn’t really.  This is something I grew up with, grew up learning about.  I am proud to work on this production, especially on nights like tonight when i know that someone was actually touched by the story.  Zachor – Remember.  To me, that is what it is all about.  We need to remember, and if this helps, then I am happy.

Are there still things that make me upset when I think about the Holocaust, of course.  Could I walk through the museum in D.C. or Yad VaShem in Israel without being moved, no.  It is part of our history as a global community and it is part of my history.  On Passover we remember the Exodus from Egypt by saying “I was there when God took us out of Egypt…” and I think that there are many who feel that the Holocaust needs to be remembered the same way.

As bloggers, many try to leave what they hope will be a lasting impression on the world. Some might actually do that.  We all want to be remembered.  The real question is, will anyone be able to do it the same way that a 13 year old girl did with a fountain pen and a diary?

This is a traditional greeting for the Jewish High Holidays (Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur).  For those who live with their heads in the ground (though this is probably no one who reads blogs) or just don’t live places with a large Jewish community, today was Yom Kippur, the closing holiday of the High Holidays.  It is a day of repentance, atonement, and remembrance.  Many Jews will mistakenly tell you that it is the most important holiday on the Jewish calendar.  While it is good that people  think this, I do think it is part of the problem with what I call “once-a-year” Jews.  Cest La vie, everyone should observe their religion in their own way, I have just always thought it was goofy to only come to services at this time of year.

The High Holidays are a time to reflect on the past year and try to make the new year better.  It is also a time of great pomp and circumstance at most synagogues.  It is probably the only time of year that most synagogues require you to have tickets to get in the door and a pass to park in the parking lot.  Some congregations go so far as to have reserved seating and getting seats closer to the front “costs” more (in dues or donations).

The Holidays are also a time when congregations give honors to people, usually people who have either given of themselves or given money.  I do a lot of volunteer work to help with organizing and leading services, especially over the past six months while we were looking for a new Rabbi.  Also, during the holidays my shul runs both a conservative and reform service, but we only have one rabbi and cantor so I was asked to help lead parts of both services (on different days).  I am happy to help, I feel like it makes the holidays mean a little more to me, knowing that I am helping others have a good experience with them.

So this year I get my package with my tickets and parking passes and such, and included in that are two additional pages.  Both are notifications of honors that the congregation gave to me.  The first, however, was for the part of services that I was asked to lead.  I would not really have thought too much about it save fore the fact that it was the same form letter used for the other honor that I was given.  Leading services was something that I volunteered to do, the other honor was given to me as recognition.  Both letters, in the same envelope, asked that I make a donation in recognition of these honors.

This is the thing that gets me every year, I give of myself because I don’t really have money to give, I volunteer to do things like lead services because the congregation needs help, and then twice in one fell swoop they are asking for more money?  Tradition or not, it bugs me that this is how it works.  The people who they honor who give money will most likely continue to give whether you ask as part of the honor or not.  I understand the thought process, but it has never sat well with me.

All that aside and despite the fact that I had to race to work after all of the High Holiday services, I felt good about the holidays this year.  As I said before, helping to lead services, helping to facilitate the prayers of others makes the holidays mean much more to me.  In both Jewish tradition and in my personal life, music means a lot.  Leading a congregation in song is one of the highest forms of prayer.  It was a beautiful service this morning, and walking out knowing that the congregation felt good about  the service is a nice feeling.

My mother likes to remind me that it is never to late to become a rabbi or cantor.  While I enjoy studying my religion, I am not sure if that is for me.  I have said before on this blog that I don’t know if I could really be a spiritual leader full time.  I think the way that I have balanced my life works pretty darn well.

I know that a few times I have mentioned that currently the synagogue that I am a member of  is on the hunt for a new Rabbi.  As I understand it, the reasons behind our old rabbi leaving is mostly political and financial.  It is unfortunate that no matter what your religion may be, there is always some kind of political undercurrents that affect the day-to-day activities of the congregation or community.  So, that is how we find ourselves in the middle of a search for a new rabbi and a period of what will amount to almost six months without a rabbi at all.

Thankfully, there are plenty of people, like myself, who are volunteering to help the synagogue continue to maintain the same ritual feeling during this rabbinic drought.  We have people who help lead services, read Torah, and all that kind of stuff.  It is actually rather enjoyable, I personally like the lay-led feeling, which I think is something that I have expressed before.  Religion is all about community, and while i do think that there is an importance to having a trained spiritual leader, the fact that any Jew who is over the age of Bar/Bat Mitzvah is eligible to officiate at services (by Jewish Law).

This morning we had one of our Shir Hadash services, which has always been a lay-led service.  Today was also a volunteer recognition day and we had a candidate for rabbi who was visiting.  It was almost a trifecta of events.  As usual, we had not to many people there at the beginning of the service, but I kicked everything off on a good start, I think.  Rabbi Goldstein, the visiting rabbi, seemed to really enjoy my leading of the first part of the service, he said it really put him in a great frame of mind to lead the next section.  Pretty cool.

I kind of book-ended the service in that I did the opening and the closing sections.  For the second time now people have come up to me after services saying things like “why do we need to hire a new rabbi when we have you?”  I haven’t really come up with a good response to that other than just thanking them for the complements.  Today we even had people asking why every service can’t be like the Shir Hadash service.

My personal feeling when getting up to lead a service is that it should be engaging and accessible and people (the congregation) should want to be there.  There are definitely days when I have got up to lead and it has felt like a performance, like I was there singing and reading and everyone else was along for the ride.  Today, on the other hand, I really felt like everyone was on the same page and energy of the service was really amazing.  I felt like people found a way to be active and participatory and I really wish I could nail down what worked.

People told me that they love the energy and excitement (I am not sure if that is the right word) that I bring when I lead.  I certainly try to bring that all the time.  I try to use melodies that people know and can sing along with.  I don’t really like it when services turn into a concert.  We are all there to pray as a community, not to listen to the rabbi, cantor, or leader pray.  Everyone has to put something in to get something back.

The thing that really struck me today was all the people who I have now heard with sentiments like the one above: “why do we need to hire a new rabbi when we have you?”  While I consider myself fairly knowledgeable in my Jewish studies, it was never the focus of any of my studies thus far in life.  I have learned a great deal from going to Hebrew School (kinda like Sunday school for most Christian religions) through high school, and from attending a Jewish summer camp, but that education barely scratches the surface of what there is to learn.  I am not a fluent Hebrew speaker, I can read the language but I don’t know every word on every page.  I also have no formal training as a religious leader.  I don’t think that I am really qualified to dispense faith-based advice.

I enjoy learning and studying my religion.  I have an entire bookshelf dedicated to Jewish books.  After all, one of the most important ideas in Judaism, and in most religions, is to continue to study the teachings and texts of the religion.  While I am sure that I could probably find my way through studies on my own, I often seek the advice or knowledge of my religious leaders.  The most fun there is when you ask a question that they don’t have an answer to and then you can go study it together!

I just find it interesting that people in our congregation would consider, even for only a moment in praise, that I would make a good addition to the pulpit here.  I am happy to help out, happy to volunteer.  I would be happy to do so on a regular basis, but I think that we would quickly find that something was missing if we didn’t have an ordained rabbi.  On that note, I was very impressed with Rabbi Goldstein, he seemed to have very god ideas on how to really embrace the values of Judaism and put them to work making a stronger, more active community.  He seemed like the kind of person who could bring to the table a lot of the same ideas and talents that I do AND also bring the role of spiritual leader.  Now, he is only the second candidate that I have met, but I am still very impressed.

Where will the whole adventure take us? I am not really sure.  I don’t really know if there are many other religions out there who ever really lean on the congregants to lead services and such.  I would hope there are as I think that it gives a great sense of community.  What do you feel is important in religious/spiritual leaders.

So, we opened the fifth show of the season, I had my birthday, the Winter Olympics started, and I led part of services at temple this week.  Lots of exciting stuff.  It is nice to get to the weekend and have some time off, and what a good weekend for it.  The holiday weekend will be nice, with no work Monday I should be able to get some good skiing in.  We will just have to see how the crowds are.

The service on Saturday morning was nice.  Once a month we do a lay-led service that is known as our Shir Hadash (new song) service.  I know that there are some people in the congregation who don’t really love the service, but I think that it is nice.  I think that it is great to have a service that encourages more people to participate and is less of a concert by the cantor.  Today was a really great service.  I lead a large section of the service and I could tell that people were getting into it.  After the services, many people came up to myself and the other leaders to say how much they liked the service.

We are looking at ways to edit and update the service and how it is conducted so that we continue to keep people interested and excited about coming.  I will be meeting with a couple of the people responsible for such things this coming week to look at where the service came from and where it needs to go to stay good.

It also turns out that next weekend is the 13th anniversary of my Bar Mitzvah.  That is kinda cool.  I certainly haven’t really thought about it, but they were looking for torah and haftorah readers for next weekend which is how I found out that it was my parasha.  Go figure.  I still know most of it, and since the first time, I have actually learned how to learn it again.  So I will be reading the haftorah next weekend in honor of my Bar Mitzvah anniversary.  It seemed like a god thing to do.  So, if you are going to be in the SLC area next weekend, you should come!

The other new thing this week is that I started a photo project that has been going around the tubes, Project 365.  You can find the images from my project over at http://365.icewolf08.com.  The goal is just to take at least one photo every day for a year.  Since I kicked the project off on my birthday, it will end on my next birthday in 2011.  Hopefully I can make it work.

…Faith, God, Prayer…

It sounds like a list of tags, but they are themes that I seem to come across often in the blogs that I read.  I don’t have an issue with this, I just find it interesting how much and how many people publicly talk about these things.  I don’t know why it surprises me because since moving to Utah I have had more conversations about religion and faith than I probably have ever had before.  Sometimes I feel like any time you meet someone new out here the conversation inevitably turns towards religion at some point.

I consider myself to be a practicing Jew and I align myself with the conservative movement.  I feel like I have a pretty good Jewish education that probably stems mostly from the ten summers that I spent as a camper at a Jewish summer camp.  I enjoy going to synagogue, I help lead services, and I like to expand my knowledge base.  I am by no means an expert, but I feel like I have a pretty good grasp on most of the concepts.  I don’t let my religion dictate my life, but it certainly does influence some of the things that I do from day to day.

One of the things that I find most interesting are the cases where people “find” religion or faith as a result of dealing with something in their lives like an illness or death or something.  The question that it brings to mind though, is: “What is religion doing for you now that you have ‘found’ it?”  I firmly believe that people who convert to a religion make “better” members of the religion than people who were born into it, but how do people who find religion compare?  What is it about a person’s situation and their seemingly passed over religion that draws them back to that religion?

There is certainly nothing wrong with finding religion and taking what it offers.  One of the biggest things that religion gives people is a sense of belonging.  Religion is the foundation for many great communities, communities that support their members when they are in need.  At least I hope that is the case!  I certainly have been happy to find such a strong, albeit small, Jewish community in Salt Lake City.  I mean this is one of the only places in the world where a Jew could be considered a gentile!  the Jewish community here helped me out when I was new to the area, made me feel at home, and it still does.

Personally I find it interesting to discuss religion even though there are some aspects of some religions that I don’t agree with and really just don’t make sense to me (sometimes religion in general falls in that category).  Sometimes I find the people who say that god or Jesus gave them the power to go on a little hard to swallow, but if their faith gave them something to grab onto to keep going, that is a good thing.  Everyone, no matter where you live or who you are, should have the right to believe whatever they want.  This of course is not the case, but it should be.  However, it should be noted that the flip side of that sentiment is that no-one has the right to tell someone else what to believe.

It is the issue of what you believe and what you think other people should believe that is the source of much of the contention in the world.  There are too many people who think that what they believe is the only answer and they insist that everyone else believe the same thing.  I live in a city filled with people who believe just such a thing, it is literally their mission to bring as many people as they can into the fold over the course of their lives.  Their rite of passage is to go on a mission somewhere in the world to spread their faith.  What gives them the right to tell another person that said person’s beliefs are wrong?

Personally, I think that the best stance to take with religion is that there is no reason to insist that yours is the right one or the only one.  If there actually is a right and wrong religion then in the end, everyone will figure it out!  No need to try to shove it down my throat now when it is really impossible to know if there is a right and wrong at all.

So where does all of that leave me?  I am not entirely sure how I got here on account of I just kinda put my thoughts out.  I have been intrigued at how god and religion seem to play an important role in many people’s lives, or at least the parts of their lives that they blog about.  My religion and beliefs certainly play an important role in my life and they have made me who I am today, I have just never felt like some divine force is leading me through life.  I don’t challenge what anyone believes, they have the right to believe whatever they want and I respect that.  I just find it interesting to see what people believe and how it affects and drives their lives.