Rabbi Bloom's Sabbatical Blog

  These are separate topics. This is mostly just to show the final slide show from my 4 months in Israel, but one quick final story. On our very last day, a longtime friend of mine, Alex Lubarsky, who goes back to elementary school, even, as well as BBYO, asked me to officiate at his son's Bar Mitzvah at the egalitarian section of the Western Wall. It was an honor to do so, and it was a beautiful occasion. Getting there was something else. The first part is mostly a story for another time, but let me just say that the official Conservative/Masorti movement in Israel, of which I am a dues paying part of and who manages the egalitarian site, was the complete opposite of helpful. So it took a wild goose chase for me to find a Torah (thank you Congregation Maayanot) and Siddurim, Prayerbooks (thank you Israel Maven Tour Company). These were very far away from my residence and the Wall, and it was massively inconvenient. But the last part of the journey was something else. It was a 40 m

The title refers both to our time here, which is coming to an end, and the vote today by the Israeli Knesset. A Worrisome Day for the Future of Israeli Democracy . Today was a very sad day for much of Israel. After months of protests, intensifying greatly over the last few days with thousands camped in tents in the park that lies between our apartment and the Knesset, Israel's parliament passed the first part of a Judicial Reform package. An excellent editorial by David Horowitz of the Times of Israel expresses a lot of both what happened and how I feel about it quite well.  The specifics of this piece are that the courts can no longer overturn a law that the Knesset passes based on it being what the court considers "unreasonable." This has the potential to give the Knesset unlimited power, without the check and balance of the court. This is especially concerning for several reasons: (1) there is no third branch of government to constrain it, since the Executive branch,

  Scholar Micah Goodman of the Hartman Institute Learning at the Hartman Institute . I have spent most of the last 10 days learning at a think tank called The Shalom Hartman Institute . They call themselves the " leading center of applied Jewish thought and education, serving Israel and North America." They are an intellectual center that has some terrific and famous (at least in the Jewish academic world) scholars, and they run all kinds of programming, including a fair amount of Israeli-Arab dialogue. Every summer about 100 rabbis, mostly Conservative and Reform but a few others as well, for an intensive learning seminar centered around a common theme. This year the theme was exploring the tension between individual autonomy (a very American value) and communal obligation (a very Jewish value). In the modern world, they are held in great tension, and each speaker, utilizing Jewish texts, explored a different facet of this, such as Creed, Sacrifice, Shabbat, Holiness, Convic

  Synagogue on Jaffa Street I never noticed I needed a full day of afternoon sleep to recover from the congregational trip, and I was very much looking forward to a week without structured activities before I began the 10 day Hartman Rabbinical Seminar. But that hardly meant a week off. I filled it with all kinds of activities. There is so much for me to do in Israel. And, even at that, as my friend Howard Zangwill reminds me, you should look up every once in a while. I'll explain the picture above at the end. So what exactly did I do?  Visiting Kiryat Arba . Genesis 23:2 "Sarah died in Kiryat-Arba, also known as Hebron, in the land of Canaan; and Avraham came to mourn Sarah and weep for her." Hebron is one of the most important and controversial cities in Israel. It is where most of our patriarchs and matriarchs are said to be buried, in the Cave of Machpela, the first piece of land purchased by Jews (Abraham from Ephron the Hittite), and it is equally venerated by Musli