There’s so much I want to say right now, and all of it is creating a logjam so none of it has gotten posted in a timely fashion. While I was in Israel, it made sense to post updates about my life to a photo album on Facebook so family and friends could see everything in one coherent package, but it was exhausting to cross-post to my blog, so I was mostly silent here. That was compounded by my chaplaincy training this summer, which was both intense and tied up in issues of confidentiality. Over the next month, I aim to bring the Israel posts over here (possibly using Flikr to host the photos), write some posts on my summer chaplaincy experience, and make this site do what it’s supposed to do: offer a picture of my life, my writing, and my journey to become a rabbi.
For now, two brief updates on what’s been going on lately:
Having done my first year of rabbinical school in Israel at the Conservative Yeshiva, I’m settling into the new semester at Hebrew College as a second-year student who is also a newbie. The classes are great, the students and teachers are extraordinary, and the morning prayers are deeply meaningful–I keep feeling affirmed that I made the right choice in coming here. But I’m still acclimating to the workload–it doesn’t help that an extra course got crowbar-ed into my already-packed schedule (two of my classes meet at the same time, timeturner required). Hopefully next semester will be easier.
I’ve had the extraordinary experience of co-leading Rosh Hashanah services with my dad this year, and will co-lead Yom Kippur with him as well. He suggested it (with his typical overwhelming generosity) as a way for me to get used to leading and to the High Holiday liturgy without having to do the whole thing my first time out, and he was right about how helpful that was. But the real gift was the “backstage pass” of seeing how to put together a meaningful service beforehand and how to change it on the fly depending on whether you’re running late, what the congregation’s mood is like, etc. Invaluable.
So much more to say, but that feels like plenty for now.
Lisa Batya Feld 