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Rabbi Wolfe from Isralight was an amazing addition to the Saw You At Sinai back to camp Labor Day weekend. Aside from good humor, good nature and personable character, he had a seemingly endless supply of magical metaphors (and similes). It appeared to me that he was able to grap the essence of experience of the Divine. Simple ideas made connection to God and even practice of religion not only palatable but desirable.For example, he described sheet-music. When you look at it, what you see is cold, very mathematical, complicated, calculated, and unfeeling. But when you play it, the music comes alive, your body moves in tandem to the beat, your spirit soars. So too with Halachah. He didn't claim that it was the only mechanism but it is the mechanism which we have successfully used over thousands of years to experience God. Halachah is very technical and cold but when you live it, it is transformed and it transforms you. It directs you on a mission to be a light unto the nation and achieve tikkun olam.
He also described halachah as a window. We spend time cleaning our window, people compete to say my window is better and shinier than others but they fail to realize that the window is just the means to go beyond. The purpose is to see the view and that view is God. People get lost in their window never using it to its proper end.
It was a spiritually satisfying and physically rewarding weekend. I have to rate Sinai as THEEE best shabbaton I have ever been on. They (all 3 back to camp weekends) have never failed me. One caveat. This weekend was a liberal/conservadox weekend. It wasn't the uptight machmir Nachamu. I hear that nachamu was stiff and awkward, less feeling. They didn't want to sing havdalah (so I heard). We had such an emotional havdalah with guitar and singing and dancing. Poor Nachamu machmirites lost in their own rigid window never allowing themselves to glimpse the essence and experience of God. How sad for them.
Just remember life is full of sheet-music.
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