Count the Omer 2015: Day 2

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Day 2: Gevurah within Chesed, Strength or Power within Loving-kindness
I often have trouble thinking of power within loving-kindness as something different from loving-kindness within power, which we will get to next week. The best way I can think of it is that the sephirah (emotion) of the week (this week, it's chesed) should be the main focus and we should think of how each day's sephirot are impacted. With that in mind, how is power impacted by kindness?

Last night, after reciting the blessing for the second day of the Omer, I turned on the TV to find The Ten Commandments playing. As I was lying in bed later thinking about power within loving-kindness and Charleton Heston, I thought of how beloved Moses was in the movie by everyone - Egyptians, Hebrews, Ethiopians, and Midianites. He attained great power by showing kindness to everyone, whether they were royalty or slaves, a nation he was sent to conquer or migratory desert-dwellers. Because of his kindness, Moses was almost named Pharaoh, was welcomed into Midian, and was successful in leading his people to freedom. Ramses, on the other hand, was greedy, jealous, and cruel and, while he received temporary power by these means, these traits ultimately led to his downfall.

Power within loving-kindness - one can attain power through kindness and that will be a greater power than that achieved through greed and deceit.

Count the Omer 2015: Day 1

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Welcome to another thrilling journey of self-reflection. That's right, it's time to Count the Omer! If you're new to Counting the Omer, I have included some really great resources below for you.

Literally, an omer is a unit of measurement, and when the Temple stood, an omer of barley was given as an offering on the second night of Passover (which was last night). Beginning on the second night of Passover, we count for seven weeks from day 1 to day 49. Counting the Omer is a mitzvah, beginning with Passover and ending on Shavuot. The counting commemorates our exodus from Egypt (our physical freedom) and God giving us the Torah at Mount Sinai (our spiritual freedom).

Kabbalah (Jewish mysticism) teaches that human experience is made up of seven sephirot (characteristics or emotions) and as we Count the Omer, we should also contemplate our inner selves. Just as the Israelites moved in seven weeks from slavery to freedom, we should seek in these seven weeks to better ourselves.

The seven sephirot are:
1. Chesed (חסד): loving-kindness, mercy
2. Gevurah (גבורה): strength, justice, power, severity
3. Tiferet (תפארת): beauty, balance, integration, miracles, compassion, spirituality
4. Netzach (נצח‎): eternity, endurance, victory
5. Hod (הוד): splendor, majesty, glory (sometimes translated as humility)
6. Yesod (יסוד): foundation, connection
7. Malchut (מלכות): leadership, kingdom

Clearly there are many (sometimes conflicting) translations of each of these sephirot, but we will do our best to work them out over the next seven weeks.

Each week and each day of the Omer represents a different emotion and they go in order, so it is easy to follow along. The first week is the week of chesed and the first day is also chesed, so day 1 of the Omer is chesed within chesed.

Day 1: Chesed within Chesed
Loving-kindness within Loving-kindness or Mercy within Mercy
We begin with love, because, as every good poet and Harry Potter fan knows, love is the greatest power in the world. I'm not sure that the Beatles were entirely right in thinking that "all you need is love," but it is certainly important and love is stronger and more enduring when it is all-encompassing, mutually reciprocated, within and without. That, I think, is chesed within chesed; not only to love, but to express it.

I'll be counting for the next 49 days, so feel free to follow along!

Resources for Counting the Omer
The Homer Calendar
Judaism 101: The Counting of the Omer
Aish: The ABC's of the Omer
Aish: Daily Omer Meditation
My Jewish Learning: How to Count the Omer
Omer Friends Style (daily Omer meditations as they relate to Friends)
Go And Learn It: Count the Omer 2014
Go And Learn It: Count the Omer 2013, Day 1

G-dcast's 49 Facts for 49 Days

2014 in Review

This has been a whirlwind year, full of moves and career changes, new skills and old interests. Last year, Marc and I rang in the new year in Birmingham (yes, Birmingham, Alabama), having just moved there in December. By March, I was looking for ways out; by April, I had been accepted to graduate school at George Washington University; and by June, I had moved to Washington, DC, where I fell in love with museums all over again. It's been a strange, but wonderful year.

Birmingham

(December 2013-June 2014 with a brief return in August)

Birmingham Skyline from Railroad Park

I was so excited to move to Birmingham. Yes, you read that right. I - lover of all things Abraham Lincoln, who has ranted on multiple occasions about Confederate flag memorabilia, and loved living in Philadelphia - was optimistic about moving to the deep south. I said goodbye to my winter coat (though, luckily, I held onto it), bragged about the warm weather I enjoyed to my friends up north and laughed at the southerners around me who bundled up for 50 degree weather in January. I got involved in the Jewish community, which was tight-knit in a way that I have only seen in the south. I joined the Jewish young adult social group, became a board member of the Birmingham chapter of Hadassah, took a part-time job at the JCC, and became a substitute teacher at the Jewish Day School. Perhaps most impressively, I finally learned how to cook. I had plenty of time, since I was never able to find full-time employment, so I baked and cooked, and sent Marc to work with all my leftover concoctions. I even blogged all my recipes! I am most proud of my bagel recipe, which took me months to perfect.

If Birmingham was so great, why was I already looking to leave by March? It was a number of things, really, not all of them Birmingham's fault, though much of it was.  

• It is not a walkable city and I had to drive almost everywhere, despite living downtown. Marc was able to walk to work and we could walk to Railroad Park (pictured above), but for errands, for my job, or anything else, I had to drive and I hate driving.
• Birmingham inhabitants love their city, but questioned us constantly about why we would have chosen to move there. It is not a region to which people move without previous ties to the area, so we received a lot of strange looks when people learned that we did not have any relatives nearby or family history there. People were still very welcoming, don't get me wrong, but these kinds of questions made it seem like Birmingham had nothing of value to offer outsiders.
• The job market for me was terrible. My job at the JCC was a part-time front desk position, where I greeted members, answered the phone, and took payments for swimming lessons on the 5:00-9:00 AM shift. Talk about being underemployed!
• My unhappy job situation prompted me to really sit down and think about the career that I want. Over the past four years, I have continued to cycle back to two potential careers: museum exhibition development and Jewish education. For years, I have researched (with varying levels of seriousness) museum studies and Jewish studies programs. I came back to Jewish Studies this year, hoping to further my education far away from Birmingham. While looking for Jewish Studies degree programs on the east coast, I came across a brand new Masters degree: Experiential Education and Jewish Cultural Arts (EEJCA) at GW, which combines museum education and Jewish Studies into one two-year program. I found it in late March. I had missed the application deadline, but thankfully, they were taking late applications and by Passover in April, I was in and planning a move to Washington, DC!

Solo Summer in Washington, DC

(June-July 2014)

In the middle of June, I left Marc in Birmingham to start my first summer semester of graduate school at GW. It was the first time in my life that I have ever lived completely by myself, an experience I could have done without. Aside from the loneliness of missing Marc, I had a very active summer. I met 19 new people - 6 of them in the EEJCA program and 13 in the Museum Education Program (MEP) - and spent more hours at museums than I can count.

Top Row: U.S. Holocaust Museum, Building Museum, Air & Space, Frederick Douglass House
Bottom Row: Smithsonian Castle, National Zoo

I had classes about museums all day on weekdays, but managed to do non-class, non-museum related things as well. I enjoyed a Bruckner symphony at the Kennedy Center, trivia on Wednesday nights with friends from Philadelphia, and Friday night jazz concerts at the National Gallery Sculpture Garden.

Independence Day

(Fourth of July Weekend)

I did get to see Marc for the 4th of July weekend. We met for the weekend in Charlottesville, VA, where we spent even more time at museums. On the 4th of July, we saw 72 people become naturalized citizens of the United States at Monticello. We also visited the homes of James Madison and James Monroe, went hiking in Shenandoah National Park, and saw the Montpelier Train Depot, which is an amazing little self-guided museum restored to the time of segregation.

Clockwise from the Left: Shenandoah, Monticello, Montpelier Train Depot

Fall Term

(September-Present)

The best part of fall term was that Marc got a job in Virginia and we were able to move to Maryland together, instead of continuing our long-distance marriage. Goodbye forever, Alabama! In DC, we have thrown a few house parties, played some weeknight trivia, and witnessed the Nationals' no-hitter in the last game of the regular season (though sadly, they didn't go very far in the playoffs).

We briefly flirted with joining a Modern Orthodox shul down the street from us, which has a rabbi and a maharat (which is basically a female rabbi without all the religious authority they would have if they were men), a waist-high mechitza down the middle of the room, and a very welcoming community, but ultimately decided after spending Rosh Hashanah there that Modern Orthodoxy is not for us. We spent Yom Kippur at the Conservative synagogue across the street and are still trying out synagogues in the area for the right fit. Also, for Rosh Hashanah, I got to try out a new apple-stuffed challah recipe and it was delicious!

My class on contemporary Jewish life in America was by far the best. It was academically engaging and intellectually challenging and allowed for a mix of personal experience and professional detachment when analyzing the various topics. Outside of class, we got to see multiple Jewish plays and speakers, including a very interesting interpretation of Yentl at Theater J and a great performance of Fiddler on the Roof at Arena Stage.

Museum Audiences was also a great class with flexible assignments that gave me the opportunity to apply our readings to the audiences that I am specifically interested in engaging: Jewish adults and non-Jewish audiences in Jewish settings.

Teaching 5th Graders at the National Gallery of Art

Finally, there was the Museum Education Seminar course and corresponding internship at JPDS in DC. The seminar itself, which met once a week on Fridays so that we could learn education theory and discuss our internships with each other, was a thorn in my side, but the internship was wonderful! The teachers I worked with and shadowed were fantastic and I already miss my kids. For my final project, I took my fifth graders to the National Gallery of Art to learn about Exodus in art, Moses, and leadership.

That is basically my 2014 in a nutshell. In 2015, I hope for more of the same great experiences. I will try to be better about blogging them when they happen.

Happy New Year!