Why Kavanah? [from G-d in Search of Man] - R. Abraham Joshua Heschel
If a deed is good unto itself, why should it be considered imperfect if done without the participation of the soul?
A moral deed unwittingly done may be relevant to the world because of the aid it renders unto others. Yet a deed without devotion, for all its effects on the lives of others, will leave the life of the doer unaffected. The true goal for man is to be what he does. The worth of a religion is the worth of the individuals living it. A mitzvah (sp.), therefore, is not mere doing but an act that embraces both the doer and the deed.
Memory [from the 5 Legged Table] - R. Avrum Infeld - Melitz website
“Jews don’t have history, they have memory!”
While history is about what happened in the past, memory is about how that past drives our present and our future. As Avraham says, If history is prose, memory is poetry.
Jewish life and language is filled with opportunities to remember our past – “lizkor” and “zikaron” in Hebrew – so that the present can be a strong bridge to the future.
Tourists - Yehuda Amichai
Visits of condolence is all we get from them.
They squat at the Holocaust Memorial,
They put on grave faces at the Wailing Wall,
And they laugh behind heavy curtains In their hotels.
They have their pictures taken together with our famous dead at Rachel’s Tomb and Herzl’s Tomb and on the top of Ammunition Hill. They weep over our sweet boys and lust over our tough girls and hang up their underwear to dry quickly In cool, blue bathrooms.
Once I sat on the steps by a gate at David’s Tower, I placed my two heavy baskets at my side. A group of tourists was standing around their guide and I became their target marker. “You see that man with the baskets? Just right of his head, there’s an arch from the Roman period. Just right of his head.” “But he’s moving, he’s moving!” I said to myself: redemption will come only if their guide tells them, “You see that arch from the Roman period? It’s not important: but next to it, left and down a bit, there sits a man who’s bought fruit and vegetables for his family.”
(14) On the contrary, if you keep silent in this crisis, relief and deliverance will come to the Jews from another quarter, while you and your father’s house will perish. And who knows, perhaps you have attained to royal position for just such a crisis.”
Questions for Us:
- How do the first two texts relate action to intention?
- What does it mean to be what you do?
- Why did you choose to be a Jewish foundation professional?
- What did you give up to be a Jewish professional?
- Where and who would you be if not here?
Questions for our Grantee Partners:
- How do the last two texts relate to responsibility?
- What are we asking young people to give up to have meaningful Jewish lives?
- What do they get in return?