Family and Politics

I apologize for the two week lag in posting, but I have been back in North America first at the Wexner Foundation Summer Institute in Stowe, Vt, and then home in Montreal and Ottawa. The past two weeks can be summed up in two words- family and politics. First, the theme of the Wexner Institute was "The Family Room". Throughout the week we looked at all aspects of the family as it interacts with our future roles as Jewish professionals, from relationships between parents and children, to interfaith families, to balancing work and family, to breaking down heteronormative assumptions of family, and so on. Family has been very much on my mind during my first two months in Israel. The distance from my love, and my family, has put a sharp accent on things that are of central concern to how I want to live my life true to my understanding of my tradition. I suppose that my views on how I want to grow in Judaism can be summed up by Confucius: "To put the world right in order, we must first put the nation in order; to put the nation in order, we must first put the family in order; to put the family in order, we must first cultivate our personal life; we must first set our hearts right." In other words, I need to work from the inside out, with the inner rings being consistent, and leading to, the other rings.

Politics have also been front and centre. Not wanting to feel left out of all of the excitement down south, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper will likely (99.9%) go to the Governor General to dissolve Canada's 39th Parliament and set an election for the day after Canadian Thanksgiving, i.e. October 14th, i.e. the first day of Sukkot. Election fever is running high in Ottawa, and while home I got to see the beginnings of things first hand. Both the US and Canadian elections will, I believe, come down to vision- what sort of vision the respective parties have for their respective countries. The visions are quite different, and all I can hope for is that we, the people, take the time to consider the visions, and to go and vote.

Best,
Dara