Comfortably Uncomfortable

One of the saving graces as a Jewish education professional has been to recognize the role of addressing our own mental health needs so we can properly focus on providing the healthiest environment for our own students. As a mental health professional, in order to practice in the field, I am required to receive my own mental health supervision. As an educator, I find this type of support equally valuable, especially when our curriculum involves educating about an active war that affects our very core. As soon as the war started, I recognized that to be able to properly be there for my students, I had to take care of myself. Therapist: “Have you tried journaling?” Me: “no, I am terrible at it” Therapist: “Why?” Me: “Because why would I want to put into words the discomfort and go back and re-read it and sear it into my memory? What kind of masochist does that?” Joke’s on me, journaling is now what I do for a living. For the last 11 months, many of us have coped with the darkness of this...

Living our most authentic Jewish lives, or as I like to call it, Jewishly, is no longer things like your usual Shabbat dinner and grandma’s matzo ball soup. Long gone are the days where living Jewishly meant being your family’s designated carrier of recipes and holiday traditions, wearing the Jewish star you received for your Bat Mitzvah, discussing that youth group and camp life, and playing an unexpected game of Jewish geography.  Nowadays, to live Jewishly involves layers of complexity. We are often asked our level of practice; do we live by halakha (Jewish law)? Is there room for flexibility there? What about social justice? Where do we land on interfaith marriage? What about traditional ritual practices? Are we being too liberal or not traditional enough? And a current favorite, are you a zionist?! Take a deep breath and let's unpack this or, in my case, at least take out the stuff you immediately need and leave the rest for the next round of laundry (let’s be honest here, unp...

 I swear, sometimes I could bang my head against the wall. How can I be a Social Worker and educator and forget such a basic concept: I forgot how to take care of myself. Here's what happened: The last two years have been especially difficult in many ways. In the process of trying to find my new self, both professionally and personally, I managed to drop the ball on every single aspect of my life. In my quest for infallible Pam, I made every single mistake in the book; I over scheduled, over worked, and under slept (we'll pretend thats a real word) just so I could cover everything that needed to get done. I spent every extra moment I had with the kids in hopes to make up for everything and anything. I paid steep prices by losing friendships, disappointing people I look up to, falling behind on my readings for school, you name it. I screwed everything up. And then a war started, and the world started hating us, and because I am a Jewish educator, I needed to make sure that I was...

  Diary of a crisis educator Back in 2020, we thought that our ability to pivot from in-person to virtual was a turning point in our careers in which people would recognize the value of educators. We adapted lessons, restructured curriculums, and served as the unofficial support systems for our students who were struggling with the inevitable isolation of the pandemic. We showed up with a smile on our faces and held space for our students to have access to a semblance of normalcy. There was this moment, around 3 days before October 7, 2023, when I thought we were finally back to normal life. I was recording an Instagram Reel with my class which, as it happens, includes my own son. It was about Simchat Torah and as luck would have it, it would be my very first time in front of an open Torah scroll and I would get to share this with the kids! Yes, I am a Bnei Mitzvah tutor, but was also raised very conservative (I know, shocking), so while I can read and chant Torah, I had not crosse...

  “I was told that you could not get tattoos if you were Jewish, that you cannot be buried in a Jewish cemetery if you have them”. I found myself slowly lowering the sleeves of my shirt to cover my own in what felt like an educational failure. There I was, standing in a room of students, discussing the holocaust and the tattoos on survivors arms, while displaying my own. There we were, explaining how these tattoos were used to dehumanize people and strip them from their name and identity, while I had multiple tattoos that I had willingly acquired myself. Oh, the irony and deep shame. We gave the students the now blanket answer to their question: this law (while much more complex than stated) was written prior to the holocaust, so a lot has changed since then. And it's true, each Jewish movement has developed its own stance for tattoos. To understand this first, though, we have to go back to Leviticus 19:28, which says “ You shall not make gashes in your flesh for the dead, or incis...

My first trip to Israel was scheduled for January 2001. Part of our Jewish Day School curriculum involved Israel education that revolved around this milestone trip; from preparing us to what we would see, to how we would process the experience. In addition to Talmud and Jewish history courses, our Hebrew classes included conversational Hebrew, mostly because it is an integral part Jewish life, but also because we were being prepared for our eventual senior trip to Israel. When my oldest sister returned from hers, I wanted to know all the details. Her answer? “Just hold on, I don’t want to ruin the experience for you”. Then, the second Intifada happened. We were young, and somewhat (and in hindsight unfairly) unaware of what this meant not only to us as Jews, but to our long-awaited rite of passage.  Jewish life in Chile happens mostly in a vacuum: its self-contained nature is limited to the life behind the reinforced gates of the school, youth movement on Saturday afternoons, and t...

I feel no shame in admitting that I have cried more in the last two months than I have in the last two years. Whether it be due to grief, anxiety, fear, or even my own children's milestone events (I blubbered my way through my son's Elementary School graduation) my soul has craved (and acted on) the need for relief. If I am being honest, I feel the tears building as I write this. Part of this may be physical exhaustion, part of it is just the sheer weight of everything that has taken place in my life either directly to me, or to loved ones in the past few months.  While on a walk alongside the Kineret last week in Israel, I had the opportunity to discuss how different Jewish communities around the world handle freedom to practice or, in some cases, the lack thereof with two fantastic individuals. To no surprise, we all came to the agreement that there is one thing that binds Jewish practice across borders: Life Cycle rituals. For those of you who do not know what these are, the...