“Come for the Falafel”

Rabbi David Dunn Bauer, Yom Kippur 5768 / 2007

I am clearly striving for the “Bad Rabbi” award. On a day of fasting from food, drink, and intimate touch, I want to talk about falafel, art, and sex. Eros.

I want to talk about Israel.

Many of you may have heard me joke that my real reason for traveling to Israel is the falafel.

After an extraordinarily full and beautiful 11 days of travel there with 15 members and friends of the JCA, this summer not only do I no longer mean it as a joke, but I mean it passionately and sincerely. I mean it as a powerful advertisement to everyone in the community for travel to Israel as soon and as often as possible.

Falafel, if done right, comes in a pita bread that is so crammed full of things that it can’t close, most likely tears, and leaks tehina down the front of your shirt. In the pita are the falafel balls themselves, but also cucumber and tomato salad, hummus, hot sauce, pickles, slaw, and french fries. There is a combination of hot, cold, crisp, creamy, soothing, piquant, pungent, and fiery. They all sort of slop together, but each element retains some measure of its unique texture, taste, or heat. As you munch your way further into it, there is always an opportunity to add more of almost any spicy, sour, or creamy condiment on top, potentially doubling the volume and nutritional content of your original sandwich, and exponentially increasing the likelihood of tehina stains down the front of your shirt.

Ok. I’ll stop.

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D’var Torah

by Shoshana Jedwab

Adapted from a d’var torah given at Congregation B’nai Jeshurun in New York City during Pride Month in June.

I want to begin by telling you about an experience I had at the recent Nehirim retreat.  Nehirim is an independent national organization that creates spiritual and cultural community for Gay Lesbian Bisexual and Transgendered Jews.  They run an annual spring retreat for queer Jews of all backgrounds and denominations.

During the opening icebreaker, I was asked to write down on a large piece of paper a verb to describe where I am currently at Jewishly.  I stole a verb common in GLBT circles and shared that I am transitioning. I am transitioning from modern orthodox Jew to Medicine Woman.

Coming out as a Medicine Woman was my dramatic way of saying I am becoming more of an earth-based Jew. Becoming an earth-based Jew means more than refusing plastic bags at Fairway, or eating local organic food.  It means looking at plants and animals as part of my living community.   It means looking at myself as part of a physical and spiritual ecosystem that includes all life.  Becoming an earth-based Jew means I am interested in things in the Torah and in the Talmud that I had once written off as irrelevant. It also means I am now open to believing in things I had once thought were not true.   The Torah contains much that is hard to believe. In one parsha alone, Parshat Hukkat, which we read a few weeks ago, we are told that a potion made of Red Cow juice can beat back the gloom of death. That if you are thirsty you can ask a stone for water. And that Moses will never enter the Promised Land because he hit a rock.  But then from my previous life as a modern orthodox Jew, my current queer lifestyle would be hard to believe and a challenge to tolerate.   Like much of the Torah, my journey to where I live now was an earthly journey of body and spirit, of flesh and impulse, imagination, humor, healing, community, celebration, advocacy, and love.   In fact, my journey bears more resemblance to the earthy wisdom of Parashat Hukkat than might be apparent at first. (more…)