magid

Tonight I went to the first session of the new community beit midrash program at Hebrew College. The topic was about Jews celebrating Thanksgiving, and the discussion was led by R. Micha'el Rosenberg, who is an awesome teacher.

We started out talking about the possible reasons one might consider Thanksgiving, Halloween, and Xmas trees (ie, not the overtly religious practices such as mass or nativity scenes) to be not acceptable for Jews to do/participate in. Possible reasons included them being not acceptable for not being part of Jewish tradition, or for being a slippery slope towards non-Jewish practices or religion, non-Jewish practice being cooler (which he grouped in with insecurity about one's own religion, feeling like one has to follow the dominant norms to fit in), and having a basis in another religion's practice. (::sigh::) There was some discussion on this, about how Xmas trees may or may not be seen as secular, whether Thanksgiving has religious roots or not (apparently there are Wikipedia battles being waged on this), and so on.

Then we looked at the source materials he provided, going over them in chevruta. Once we'd had a chance to talk them through, we came back together, and he took us through some of the highlights of the readings.

( The sources within. )

Tangential architecture note: I hadn't realized just how large the one Hebrew College building is, partly because of how it faces the street, and partly because it's got another level underground. There are lots of windows, and it fascinated me how there were I-don't-know-what-to-call-them features angling around the ceiling that swooped in a way that both reminded me of an awning and gave the feeling of much more motion than I usually feel from static spaces.

( transit notes here )