Re-JEW-venating University of Texas KOACH

By Maury Jacobs
KOACH Intern
University of Texas, Austin

Have you ever found yourself sitting in services feeling lost or disconnected? I would imagine that some Jews get this feeling more then others, and I would be surprised if even the most pious among us didn’t feel disconnected at times. It was one of those mornings a few years ago when I discovered something very special.

I remember one Saturday morning service that was just like any other. We had just reached the Torah service and I had to make the important decision between following along with the Torah reading or having a quiet conversation with my friends. After the people who made the mistake of sitting behind a row of teenagers shushed me for the second time, I ruled out the option of talking. I still didn’t feel like following along the Torah portion, so I started flipping through the pages of my siddur. It was that morning that I discovered Pirkei Avot.

Pirkei Avot, known in English as Ethics of our Fathers, is one of the most important texts on Jewish morals and values. Its pages include knowledge and lessons on friendship, love, life, death, government and so much more. In just a quick first glance, I discovered that the lessons in this book were really applicable and central to my life. Pirkei Avot would reconnect me that day.

I wanted to share a lesson from Pirkei Avot as part of my Intern Update. Searching for the right quote was very difficult among all the great choices. Lessons such as "Who is wise? One who learns from everyone" and "Be the first to extend greetings to everyone you meet." But I wanted to find something that speaks strongly to us, especially as college students. And then I remembered a verse of Pirkei Avot that I had learned as a song many years before at summer camp. "Rabi Tarfon omer: Lo alekha ham’lakhah ligmor, v’lo atah ben-horin l’hibateil mimenah"—Rabbi Tarfon taught: You are not obligated to finish the task, neither are you free to neglect it. (Pirkei Avot 2:21)

Although the task that Rabbi Tarfon most likely had in mind was Torah study, we can easily apply this lesson to other aspects of our lives. Think about the tasks that await your attention this year: classes, your job, an internship, leadership positions. The list goes on and on. You are not obligated to finish the task, neither are you free to neglect it. Surely our great sages are not telling us that it’s a good idea to skip classes or work, or to fall through in our leadership responsibilities because we don’t feel a connection that day. Rather the opposite. Yes, sometimes you have classes that you don’t connect with. Some days we really just don’t feel like going to work. Rabbi Tarfon is reminding us the importance of giving 110% in all things we do. He is teaching us that even in times of our greatest feelings of disconnection, we are not free to neglect our responsibilities and we are not free to neglect who we are. As happened with me many years ago at services, it is often when we feel most disconnected that we find a way back to being even more strongly connected.

While classes and work are often hard to neglect because of fears of failing grades or being fired, some things in our lives are often neglected without notice. Our religious, spiritual, and cultural Jewish lives are often neglected. We might choose not to come to Hillel on Friday nights because of a bad experience our first year, or maybe we never even gave it a chance at all. We might choose not to celebrate a Jewish holiday because it’s not one of the ones we celebrated growing up, or we just don’t know how and are afraid to ask. Or we might choose not to visit Israel because we don’t understand our connection to the land or are too scared to visit. All these are examples of neglecting who we are because of a disconnection or some other confusion.

This year at UT we have an exciting new program to help repair our broken Jewish connections. Through KOACH activities, we will be transforming the Hillel Conservative minyan into a community, through social and educational programming. Lara Greenberg, the other co-chair of the minyan, and I have also been working hard on local programming here at UT.

Our biggest event of the semester will be KOACH Shabbat on Oct. 20-21. The theme of the Shabbaton is Who Wrote the Torah? and we have rabbinical student Abe Friedman, from the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies, coming in for the weekend to help facilitate. It will be a Shabbat full of good food, good friends, learning and lots of Shabbat ruah (spirit). There will be activities going on at Hillel through most of Shabbat, including our first Shabbat morning service and Shabbat lunch. Everyone will be welcome to come and go throughout Shabbat. After Havdallah we’ll invite everyone back to Hillel for Iron Chef: Dessert Edition. The secret ingredient is… ok, well you’ll have to come to find out, but I promise you’ll like it.

Lo alekha ham’lakhah ligmor, v’lo atah ben-horin l’hibateil mimenah" We are not obligated to finish the task, neither are we free to neglect it. I hope that this year we all have the strength to find ways to reconnect to the parts of our lives we may have neglected over the past year. May the year 5767 bring only happiness and good things to our lives.

[Posted 10/24/06]