When I was at Salisbury I had a semester where I took back to back classes on War Crimes and Terrorism, because apparently I wanted to spend a semester watching gruesome movies in class and low key hating myself for all of my life choices that had led to that moment. It was not a good time.

In those months of horrible classes and horrible decision making that got me in to those horrible classes, I realized a few things about myself.  

1) When I am stressed, I bake. I’ve written about this before, but making shoving food at people allows me to care for them and think a little less about all the things I have going on in my life. One time I showed up at a Hillel meeting with cupcakes and one of my friends took my aside to ask if I needed to talk. It’s possible I am a little predictable.

2) I’m a fairly smart person who likes to amuse myself by doing fairly dumb things. One of my favorite hobbies that semester was photoshopping dragons in to movie and TV screencaps. Yes, really. I know it makes no sense. I know it’s weird. I know it’s a huge waste of time. But it made me laugh in the moments when I was going cross-eyed from staring at books, so isn’t that worth it?

3) Naps are worth it.

4) There is no overestimating how important it is to sometimes take time to sit down and turn your brain off. Watch a movie. Eat some ice cream. Don’t focus. Don’t think too hard. Just let yourself breathe and de-stress and don’t worry about the papers and tests and the due dates. For a couple hours at least. 

I’m taking six classes right now, which is 18 credit hours, which is a lot. I’m working hard and managing all of it, but at the end of the day sometimes I feel like I just need to rest.

Tonight I’m going to sit in front of my television and watch comfort TV and eat dinner and cuddle up under like six blankets. It’s not growing my writing, but it’s recharging my mind.

So see y’all tomorrow. 

Tonight I’ve got a whole lot of nothing to do. 

It’s Friday night at 7 pm and I’m in the back of a room as big as a football field trying to find my father. The room has about 5000 people and 7 screens that are each so big that they seem overwhelming individually, and together they seem insane. On the stage there is a Rabbi and a cantor and a choir with a dozens of people from dozens of states and a few countries. There were graphics on the screens and words in Hebrew and words in English and pictures of temples and camps where people prayed in much smaller numbers then 5000, but still in communities. Still together.

I have a complicated and continuously evolving relationship with prayer, and this week, working at the largest conference on Jewish life in the world, I got a chance to reflect a little on the things I love about my religion and the things I don’t hold quite as dear. I feel like religion is so often painted in strict black and white. You believe or don’t. You feel an intense connection of there’s nothing there. I hate how conversations about faith leave so little room for grey, because for me, that’s where everything interesting about religion lives.

There’s a quote, I heard somewhere, and have since heard a few dozen times more, about how when you put three Jews in a room, you’ll come out with four opinions. I love that need to question and that need to debate at that need to discuss and analyze and not know and to know that you don’t know, but keep going and believing anyhow.

My religion has given me a community to feel a part of and a history to feel proud of. It has given me adventures and experiences and people who mentor me and those I can help grow. It has given me answers and questions, and the ability to feel a little less uncomfortable with the unknown. It has given me homes and purpose. Tradition and pride.

I’m growing and learning still. My religion shapes itself in new ways every day, and truthfully, I’m grateful for that fluid movement. I don’t live a life that’s stagnant, so I don’t need a faith that can’t move with me. I’m doing more and being more and experiencing more. My faith evolves to encompass that.

I’m not saying I have all the answers. I’m not saying I’m right. I’m just saying that not knowing seems like a silly reason to toss thousands of years of history and culture that my people have fought and died to keep alive by the wayside.  I’m happy in my middle. I don’t need a definitive answer on God to know that having a moral code is something that helps me be better and do better.

So I guess this is 500 words on how I’m comfortable not having answers. 500 words on how my faith is important to me, even if others don’t understand it. 500 words on how my faith is important to me even if I don’t understand it.

And that’s fine. That’s good even. That just leaves more room to grow.

I’m a little impressed that today I managed to both be asleep before my flight took off and also only wake up from the shake of the wheels hitting the ground. I think I stirred once or twice in between during my two-hour flight, but mostly I just slept. Head against the window. Thousands of miles above the ground.

It’s been a crazy week. I was at the URJ Biennial, the largest gathering of Jewish life in the entire world. I worked hard. Long days, late nights and early mornings. My feet are sore and my eyes are drooping still, but I saw and learned and experienced so much.

My writing has kind of fallen by the wayside this week. It’s taken a backseat to answering questions from old ladies wearing nametags and teens wandering convention center halls. To listening to Ambassadors and the Vice President. To wearing a hideous bright red fleece vest in a climate where fleece vests should be outlawed. To spending time with my parents and my grandmother and my friends from both costs and the states held in between.

I’m going to sleep now. It’s too early, but I’m too tire to wait. I’m going to sleep late and wake up and move on. Go to school. Do my homework. Get back in the swing of things.

Today is Sunday. Tomorrow is Monday. The days have passed quickly, but that’s because they’ve been so full.

It’s strange moving so rapidly between such a large scale experience and the every day swing of things. Between 5000 people in a plenary listening to Joe Biden and 12 people in a classroom listening to my health professor. I like both, in their own times, though I don’t think I could live in one reality without the other to balance it. I love those soaring highs and I love that routine. I love getting to live a life that has both comfort and adventure.

A very partial list of things I found in my backpack as I attempted to get ready for the first day of classes:

1) a note that said “find EVERY GLOWSTICK” in handwriting I didn’t recognize.

2) an epi-pen

3) a human tooth

4) two service readings

5) a sports whistle and a train whistle

6) a cootie catcher

7) so many weird notes about ever weirder stories from unit meetings this summer.

A very partial list of things I found in my backpack as I attempted to pack for URJ Biennial:

1)  Five friendship bracelets

2) A pack of notecards with facts about fish, held together with a rubber band that had seen much better days.

3) A pen that has the girl scout code on it, even though I was only a girl scout for about three weeks about a dozen years ago.

4) Four packs of tissues.

5) A pair of headphones much bigger then my head.

6) a laptop cord for a laptop that I haven’t owned in at least two years.

7) a folder that I covered completely in the same doodle, over and over again.

A very partial list of things I found in my backpack as I headed back to school from URJ Biennial:

1) Five water bottles

2) business cards from people in 10 states and 3 countries. Graduation is coming at a rate that makes me nervous.

3) A t-shirt that I left in New England, brought back to me by someone from New Jersey.

4) So. Many. Stickers.

5) Band-aids for all my blisters.

6) A nametag, wrinkled and worn, with pins from my camps and ribbons from my friends and the phrase STAFF in big bold letters.