Elat Chayyim on the Move
Jill Hammer and her partner Shoshana Jedwab drove me up to Isabella Friedman for the dedication ceremony that formally transitions Elat Chayyim from its 13 years as an independent facility in the Catskills to its future home in the Berkshires.
In all the people I encountered there, several who I lived with two years ago in intentional community at Elat Chayyim for the year (including our community rabbi then, David Ingber), so many important stories were woven together into one time and one place - a particularly salient moment since I've completed my first week of rabbinical school and Elat Chayyim was the place that really got me here in so many ways.
After lunch, a crowd of about 100 or so of us walked down the street from Isabella Friedman to meet the people who were walking Elat Chayyim's Torah the final stretch of the 60 miles it traveled to its new home. When we saw them, a cheer erupted from both groups. We enveloped them, turned around, and began passing the Torah from person to person amongst ourselves as we escorted it to its new home.
When we finally arrived at the entrance to Isabella Friedman, Jeff suggested we take on the custom of kissing mezzuzot every time we go through a doorway, that we be mindful of the transition that we're going through and the intention we bring into the space we pass into when we do this. As we sang a beautiful chant about loving both what we pass from and go to, the new administrators of Elat Chayyim held the old wooden frame to EC's main doorway (which bears the same inscriptions as those on a mezzuzah scroll) as we (many of us moved to tears) walked slowly through the doorway and then under a chuppah symbolizing the marriage of EC and Isabella.
Despite the wedding symbols, when we sat down in rows for the dedication ceremony - and people shared memories of their first mikvah at EC in its hot-tub, or their first heart-circle, or the divine silence that descended onto EC at night - tears stung my eyes at the realization this was also a funeral. All of us (including EC's founders) were saying goodbye not only to the old campus, but its executive and assistant directors who had poured their hearts and lives into this vision.
After the ceremony, as we walked the Torah to its new ark, we formed two rows and clasped our upraised hands with the person opposite us to form a tunnel that the new director of EC passed through, bearing the Torah. As the end of the tunnel began to break up and pass through it, people began to see each other as mezzuzot and kissed each other. I got a nice big bearded kiss from Arthur Waskow as I ducked under people's arms and arrived at a room already humming with joyful song and dance.
In all the people I encountered there, several who I lived with two years ago in intentional community at Elat Chayyim for the year (including our community rabbi then, David Ingber), so many important stories were woven together into one time and one place - a particularly salient moment since I've completed my first week of rabbinical school and Elat Chayyim was the place that really got me here in so many ways.
After lunch, a crowd of about 100 or so of us walked down the street from Isabella Friedman to meet the people who were walking Elat Chayyim's Torah the final stretch of the 60 miles it traveled to its new home. When we saw them, a cheer erupted from both groups. We enveloped them, turned around, and began passing the Torah from person to person amongst ourselves as we escorted it to its new home.
When we finally arrived at the entrance to Isabella Friedman, Jeff suggested we take on the custom of kissing mezzuzot every time we go through a doorway, that we be mindful of the transition that we're going through and the intention we bring into the space we pass into when we do this. As we sang a beautiful chant about loving both what we pass from and go to, the new administrators of Elat Chayyim held the old wooden frame to EC's main doorway (which bears the same inscriptions as those on a mezzuzah scroll) as we (many of us moved to tears) walked slowly through the doorway and then under a chuppah symbolizing the marriage of EC and Isabella.
Despite the wedding symbols, when we sat down in rows for the dedication ceremony - and people shared memories of their first mikvah at EC in its hot-tub, or their first heart-circle, or the divine silence that descended onto EC at night - tears stung my eyes at the realization this was also a funeral. All of us (including EC's founders) were saying goodbye not only to the old campus, but its executive and assistant directors who had poured their hearts and lives into this vision.
After the ceremony, as we walked the Torah to its new ark, we formed two rows and clasped our upraised hands with the person opposite us to form a tunnel that the new director of EC passed through, bearing the Torah. As the end of the tunnel began to break up and pass through it, people began to see each other as mezzuzot and kissed each other. I got a nice big bearded kiss from Arthur Waskow as I ducked under people's arms and arrived at a room already humming with joyful song and dance.
posted by Adam Lavitt at 9:39 PM
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