Passover, sun-fun, and Tzfat

A lot has happened this past week and half, but among the highlights were the Sun blessing festival (Birkat Hachama) and Passover that I spent in Tzfat with friends.

Tzfat is sort of a hub for those who study Kabbalah, which can be summed up at Jewish mysticism. Yes, Madonna has recently become a fan and apparently studies it in some way, and even tried to buy a house in Tzfat, only to be rejected by the town's municipality (phew!). It's also a huge artist colony, and the overlap of art and intense mystic religious study has created some seriously, seeeriously incredible people. This is the second time I've been, and both times I have considered throwing all of my worldly ambitions to the wind and simply settling down and getting lost in this town for the rest of my life. This might happen some day, but for now I'll just blog about it :)

So my Passover seder was led by an Orthodox family, which means that it was, among other things, very very long. Seders as I knew them growing up were fun, sing-songy, an excuse for the grown-ups to drink a lot, and an opportunity to eat a lot of good Jewish cooking. This was the same, plus four additional hours of religious explanation for what this holiday is about. Definitely a long "groooaaan" involved, but it was a great learning experience to see how the religious-religious people do it. Frankly, I was so hungry, tired, and tipsy that I barely remember anything significant, but I do know that there is a lot of wisdom, appreciation for our community as well as our sheer existance encompassed in this holiday.

So moving on from my sort of blacked out seder, a little tidbit to share that I learned while there was the Jewish concept of giving and the meaning of wealth. When we say "give" the opposite we would automatically think of is "take," right? Not so much in Judaism. The dualism in Jewish thought is "give and receive." As a sociology major, this kind of stuff is like spiritual catnip. There is a term in Hebrew called "tzedaka." Anyone who grew up even sort of Jewish is probably familiar with it. I always considered it to mean "charity." There's a tzedaka box in many homes, you make them in Hebrew school, your synagogue usually collects for certain tzedaka-related causes. It does mean charity in Hebrew, but the root of the word literally means "justice." The idea of giving to those who are less fortunate has less to do with you being a generous person and more about doing what needs to be done to make things a little more right than they currently are. Yessss.

A big questions I have is if this concept of justice count for non-Jews, too. I know that Orthodox Jews consider Jewish souls to be at a higher level than non-Jewish souls (as do most religions with their respective peeps I think), so does this idea of evening the scale count for the souls who aren't really up there with the Jewish souls?

Some sun blessing pics. Soooo wonderful: