One Small Step For A Jew....

Lechi lach to a land that I will show you
Lech li-cha to a place you do not know
-Debbie Friedman

We read Lech Lecha this week, the Torah portion in which G-d tells Abraham, "You're a grown man already; it's time to move out and find your own place." In this spirit, I am starting a new journey today.

No, not this blog.

Well, also this blog, but not primarily.

I am going to rabbinic school.

There. I said it. And it only hurt a little bit. Technically, this is resuming a journey I once was on, but I stopped walking for long enough that it feels new. And this will be a journey; I have no illusions that I'll start attending school this year or next, or even the year after that most likely. There's a lot of work I need to do before I'm ready and no way to shortcut it, even if I didn't have a full-time career to deal with. I need to improve my Hebrew skills considerably, I need to figure out a large number of financial and logistical issues, I need to get involved with the Reformed Judaism movement on both the temple-level and beyond. Oh, that reminds me; I also need to start going to temple regularly and get re-engaged with the ongoing cycle of Jewish life.

Little things.

I'm excited about this - which is in and of itself exciting because it's been a while since I got truly excited about something. So I'm going to go for it, full-out crazed effort. This might be difficult for me, given my recent animosity towards organized Judaism as well as....other....life issues. So I'm going to try to keep up this blog, in hopes that it will encourage me to keep up the momentum. If you notice that it's been too long since I posted, please feel free to bug me about it.

A pleasant order to all of you, and I'll see you along the road!

-AC