Skip to main content

love thy neigbor

Sooo, all day I've been thinking it is Wednesday. So much has been happening and no moment to rest. It seems like the whole city is preparing in all the ways imaginable on A. the upcoming holidays and B. the upcoming lockdown. 3 weeks, only 500m from your door. Every day it seems the rules are changing and it has become so complcated, I have started thinking in terms of "Corona Halacha".

On Sunday we had our 4th PEEP class. We talked about what Experiential Education meant for us; What we think the purpose of Judaism is; What we think the purpose of Jewish education is; What it really means to be pluralistic; How we develop character and educate character; and What an Ideal Jewish community would look like to us. We learnt that Pluralism really means 

"the effective and ongoing exploration of fundamental differences among Jews. For an individual, pluralism means probing one's own views in light of other serious options. Effective pluralism promotes empathy and the capacity to collaborate with others - who differ greatly in their backgrounds and beliefs." - (from "An Israel Experience" by Charles Herman)

We learnt that the fundamental goal of experiental eduaction is to teach love. Unconditional love to the Jewish Heritage, Traditons, Text, State and People. We asked eachother if this goal is best reached in a homogenous or heterogenous group. We figured that in a heterogenous group it certainly is harder but all the more successful! Unconditional love means acknowledging and embracing the differences between our fellow people.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

10 days of Tshuva and Yom Kippur 5781

Dear friends and readers, I have decided to diverge for this post (and maybe further posts also) from relating to you my experiece of my first months on Jerusalem to sharing some of the Torah I am learning here in the Holy City, also to be fair to the title of this blog that I have chosen. The topic of the last days has been Tshuva. Many of you may have already learned what this concept of Tshuva is and means, and why we are focusing on this so much during this time of year. That all staying valid, I want to share some Torah around this topic with you. The literal translation of "Tshuva" in Hebrew is "return". Most of us have learned that Tshuva means repentence, but the literal meaning of the word, does not support this translation. Repentence means "feel or express sincere regret or remorse about one's wrongdoing or sin", but this is not what Tshuva is primarily about. Tshuva means return. Return to what? you may ask, and rightfully so. The most prev...

Parashat Devarim 5784

In unserer Parascha, Parashat Devarim, beginnt Moses mit seiner letzten Ansprache an das Volk Israel. Das Volk hat zu dem Zeitpunkt ganze 40 Jahre in der Wüste verbracht. Währenddessen ist die Generation des Exodus aus Ägypten gestorben und eine neue Generation ist in der Wüste als freie Menschen aufgewachsen. Gleich in unserer Parascha erklärt Moses der neuen Generation auch, warum das Volk 40 Jahre in der Wüste verbringen musste: Kurz vor der Ankunft im Land Israel entsandte Moses 12 Kundschafter in das Land, um von der Beschaffenheit und den Bewohnern des Landes zu berichten. 10 der Kundschafter kehrten mit sehr schlechten Nachrichten über das Land zurück. Das Volk glaubte diesen Kundschaftern und beklagte sein Leid, so ein schreckliches Land als Erbe zu bekommen. Daraufhin bestrafte Gott das Volk mit 40 Jahren Wanderung in der Wüste und dem Ableben der Generation der Ungläubigen, die dem Versprechen Gottes nicht glauben wollten, dass das Land ein gutes Land ist, wo Milch und Honig ...