Written by Rachel Glazer
This semester, I have stepped beyond the boundary of the wide-open fields we roam in the Reform movement and instead have entered the rocky valley of pluralism, tripping over Jerusalem stone along the way. This odyssey and the trials that come with it are not unwelcome. The Nachshon Project has brought in and taken us to see some fantastic speakers, each one knowledgeable and challenging. We have talked to social activist rabbis, social media experts, Israel advocates, trail-blazing journalists, world-class Jewish educators, and more. We strolled through the Ultra-Orthodox neighborhood of Bnei Brak one night, and the next, had a conversation with an Israeli Reform rabba whose opinions seemed just as radical to me. I have loved and despised Jerusalem in the same breath, perpetually torn between longing to feel a part of the Jewish people of Israel and feeling apart entirely from the Jews of my North Georgia mountains.
At home, my Jewish identity is largely defined in the negative: I am not Christian. I am not Orthodox. I am not Shomer Shabbos, kosher, an alumnus of NFTY, familiar with the Mishnah, and on and on. There is more to me than what I am not, of course. I am a Jewish educator through my work as a unit programmer at URJ Camp Coleman. I have worked to be a voice for religious minorities on my campus. But as important to me as they are, these diffuse samples of Judaic involvement don't form a coherent story in isolation, let alone in the context of the Jewish State. My challenge is figuring out the role and meaning of this part of my life which is constantly an undertone to my interactions and contributions, yet cannot be framed in the center of my experiences at home nor in the heated amalgam of Israeli Jewish life.
Contrary to many students my age, I don't have a "Plan" yet. There's no suburban front lawn as the backdrop to the next act of my life in which I spend a neat three years in graduate school and land the dream job the moment I remove my cap and gown.
When I think of the work I feel compelled to do, it undeniably has to do with women's rights. The injustice I witness second-hand through blogs, books, and videos must not continue if the world is to progress in this century in matters of health, science, thought, education and basic human rights. Even in my own more liberal environment, I see self-hate and undue self-censoring in so many of my teenage female campers, and it is lamentable-- and preventable.
I know that I have the drive and capacity to contribute the global movement toward giving women and girls self-worth and the tools to fortify their communities in an essential way.
Our prodigious speakers this semester have shared precious expertise and wisdom with us, but they have also revealed to me that organizations are just made up of people, and people get things done largely by consociating. Now that I am learning the right questions to ask and the right people to bug, the world seems much smaller, and making a substantial impact through precise and meaningful work is not as impossible a task as it once felt.
Before I can effectively formulate a Plan, I must tease apart the convoluted fibers of my instincts and inclinations. The undertaking I currently face is to identify where in my paradigm spirituality intersects with this urgency to ally with women worldwide to bring about the immense contribution they can make to this planet if afforded the education, resources and respect due to them.
Rabbi Zeff recently explained to me difference between chesed and tikkun olam, between lovingly fulfilling a mitzvah and performing a reparative act which spurs into motion a cascade of change. I did not come to Israel to learn for my own sake; I came here to learn for the benefit of others. If, in this journey, I can put a name to that yet obscure aspect of my Meaning of Life model, I will have triumphed-- and I will have a lot of work ahead of me.
