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Join us to meet the challenge: $1 million matching grant from Jim Joseph Foundation
Last night, Mechon Hadar welcomed 41 summer fellows to its intensive, immersive yeshiva program - our largest class of fellows yet. These young Jews from diverse backgrounds will spend the next 8 weeks - 14 hours a day -immersed in Jewish texts and traditions as part of a Jewish community focused on study, prayer, and social action.
Better yet, each has committed to return to their communities - 27 cities across the world - and engage their peers in building vibrant Jewish communities that will revitalize Jewish life for the 21st century.
Today we are overjoyed to announce that the Jim Joseph Foundation has awarded Mechon Hadar a 5-year, $1 million matching grant.
"Mechon Hadar is a leading new organization in the field of education and community building for young Jews, and we are excited to enter into this partnership," said Dr. Chip Edelsberg, executive director of the Jim Joseph Foundation.
Here's the catch: the grant is a matching grant. Donations count toward the match if they are first-time gifts or increases from previous gifts. We will see no funds until we raise matching funds from people like you, who share our belief that it is essential to empower the next generation of Jews.
 Mechon Hadar has a vision for how to rise to the challenge that the Jim Joseph Foundation has given us. We want to build an organization that is supported by thousands of people, where anyone who has a stake in the world we're trying to create participates. Your support - no matter its size - will make a difference in our efforts to build this world we so deeply want to see.
A $54 gift = $108 with the match = 5 new Hebrew-English Bibles
A $100 gift = $200 with the match = a new set of books for the library
A $360 gift = $720 with the match = Sponsor 8 students at a shabbaton
A $720 gift = $1,440 with the match = Sponsor a student for the one month
A $1,000 gift = $2,000 with the match = Sponsor 4 post-yeshiva incentive grants
An $1,800 gift = $3,600 with the match = Sponsor a student for the summer
A $3,000 gift = $6,000 with the match = Sponsor an elective class at the yeshiva
We are extremely grateful to the Jim Joseph Foundation for this opportunity to grow and pursue our vision of a world where Jews are passionately engaged with Torah.
Please join us in making this vision a reality.
Ariela Dubler,
President of the Board
Rabbi Elie Kaunfer,
Executive Director
Donations can be made online at www.mechonhadar.org,
or by mail to Mechon Hadar, 25 Broadway, Suite 1700, NY, NY 10004. | | Mechon Hadar | Press Release | Yeshivat Hadar-- Opening Remarks
Rabbi Shai Held
June 15, 2009
Click here to listen to the audio of Rabbi Held's remarks.
We have all of us, each of us, felt the yearning. The yearning for a place where we could learn Torah passionately without having to close our minds; and where, conversely, we could make full use of our intellect, without having to suppress our religious hunger. The yearning for a place where we could pray our hearts out, and in a community that values Torah and Mitzvot, without having to check some of our most fundamental ethical and religious commitments at the door; and where, conversely, we could live out those ethical and religious commitments without sacrificing either the intensity of our davenning or of our community. The yearning for a community that takes both God and social justice with utmost seriousness;that refuses to choose between the two because it understands that they are inextricably interwoven, and that, according to Torah, ultimately we cannot have one without the other.
Some of us - perhaps all of us - have felt that the gap between the Jewish life we yearn for and the Jewish life we encounter in "real life" is so large and often so painful that we have been tempted to despair. But Jews are forbidden from too easily surrendering to the status quo, from accepting that the world as it is, Jewish or otherwise, is the world as it must be. As the people of the Exodus, the ultimate upheaval and reversal of the status quo, we believe in possibility and in transformation. I am often reminded of something Abraham Joshua Heschel once said: in the face of crisis, "the masses despair, [but] the prophets respond." Tonight I invite you - we invite you - to be among the prophets, or, more modestly, to be among the heirs of the prophets (mibenei hanevi'im). Don't despair; respond. Help create communities that are serious about prayer, learning, and service; help us create those communities by educating and inspiring individuals who will embody and transmit these values and commitments.
Lest I be misunderstood: by prophets, or heirs of prophets, I mean nothing more grandiose than people who believe in a dream and are willing to put their hearts and their minds to making it real. Last year, I talked about how we, all of us, willed Yeshivat Hadar into being, and how now, it is no longer a dream (Ratzinu, VeHinei Ein Zo Aggada). Tonight we begin our third summer - 3 being the number of Hazakah, the symbol in Jewish culture of groundedness and establishment - and in just a couple of months, we will open our doors year-round as the first ever full-time egalitarian yeshiva in North America. There is a risk, of course, in being overly ambitious. But there is a greater risk in being under-ambitious. Do we know for sure that together we will change the face of Jewish life? No, we don't. But do we have faith that we can? This yeshiva, and these students within it; this gathering, and all of you within it, are our first evidence that we can.
II
This summer our students will immerse themselves for many hours a day in the riches of Tanakh, Talmud, Machshevet Yisrael (Jewish thought), Liturgy, and Halakha. But what, when all is said and done, do we want them to know? What do we want you to remember as you go through life as a human being and a ben or bat Torah, a person nourished and nurtured by the Jewish tradition?
1) To know that the world as a whole, and our life within it, is a gift from God. To remind ourselves on a regular basis that none of us did anything - none of us could have done anything-to earn the gifts that are life and consciousness. To know, therefore, that the fundamental religious posture is one of gratitude.
2) To believe that all human beings are created in the image of God and that each of us is therefore infinitely valuable and beloved in the eyes of God, and to believe this in our kishkes no matter how many times and in how many ways the world tells us otherwise; to know this not as a platitude but as a life project - to ask, again and again: how would my life be different if I took seriously the claim that every human being is created in the image of God? How would the life of my community, my people, my country, and the world be different if we took seriously the claim that every human being is infinitely valuable?
3) To know that there is a covenant between God and the Jewish people, and that we are called to work for a world in which human dignity is real and the presence of God is manifest; and to know, therefore, that to be a Jew is never to surrender to the status quo, but instead to dream in league with God.
4) To know that the religious and ethical project of Torah can be summed up in a slogan of the environmental movement: think global, act local. In other words: what is Judaism about? Nothing less than the redemption and transformation of the world. How can this vision be brought closer? Through careful and impassioned attention to individuals, and to details. If I care about the dignity of each and every human being, I might start by asking: how did I talk to my wife this morning? How did I interact with the stranger, one who is not socio-economically my equal, but in all the ways that matter to God, most certainly is. If I care about a world in which God's presence is manifest, I might start by asking: is my home truly open to the presence of God? Is there room for God in what Martin Buber called "the between" I establish between myself and another person? When I utter these words of prayer, or review these words of Torah: do I relinquish self-centeredness and open my heart and my life to God?
This, by the way, is what it means to take Halakha seriously: to know that the holy is built from the seemingly mundane, and that the grand is built from the otherwise merely quotidian. Or, to put it differently: Halakha, when done right, is an opportunity to instantiate the values God holds dear-love, compassion, justice, holiness-in the nethermost details of my life.
5) To know that in and through Torah we can meet God and deepen our connection to each-other and the world. Talmud Torah, in other words, is not just an intellectual enterprise but an opportunity to be seized by the soul and asked to grow as a Jew and a human being.
Let's stop for a minute and consider one of Judaism's foundational words - Lidrosh, to seek, to inquire, from which we derive the term Midrash, which means to read Torah in a seeking, inquiring, demanding way. In Genesis 18, when Rebecca feels her children struggling in her womb, she goes to "inquire of the Lord" (VeTelech Lidrosh Et Hashem); in Shemot, Moshe tells his father-in-law Yitro that the people come to him all day "to inquire of God" (Lidrosh Elohim). But as David Stern points out, by the time of Ezra, however, the word Lidrosh is used a little differently: now we learn that Ezra dedicated himself "to study the Teaching of the Lord so as to observe it" (Lidrosh Et Torat Hashem Vela'asot). Now, let's be very clear: the point here is not, God forbid, that the Torah has replaced God, or that we inquire of it rather than inquire of God. The point, rather, is that the Jewish people receive and continually rediscover Torah as a means and a vehicle for inquiring what God asks of us.
6) To know that Torah, both Halakha and Aggada, is a language, the language of the Jewish people, the language in which God and we give voice to our deepest yearnings and aspirations, as well as our most fundamental and far-reaching obligations and commitments. It is one of the tragedies and travesties of our time that most Jews don't know how to speak Judaism's language, or are convinced that it doesn't have anything to say to them because Judaism is, after all, a religion for little kids (and who can blame them for thinking that?). Our mission and our task is to raise up a new generation of Jews who, if you pardon the expression, "speak Torah." Torah is not a hobby, but a birthright; the work of Yeshivat Hadar is to help another generation of Jews receive and discover that most precious gift which is already theirs, and ours.
7) And we want our students to know, finally, that Torah comes from a place of love, and ideally leads to a place of love. Torah comes from a place of love, as we say each day: "Ahavah Rabbah Ahavtanu... Torah UMitzvot Hukkim UMishpatim Otanu Limadeta" - With abundant love have you loved us, you have taught us Torah and Mitzvot, laws and statutes. Torah leads to a place of love-love of God: VeAhavta et Hashem Elohekha; love of neighbor: VeAhavta LeRei'acha Kamocha; and love of the stranger - Ahavat HaGer.
To live a life of Torah and Mitzvot, as opposed to just going through the motions, is to grow in love. That's the blessed opportunity before us, but also the daunting challenge.
III
Let me conclude with a blessing and a challenge for the broader community of Yeshivat Hadar. R. Simlai says that all of Torah can be encapsulated in these words of the prophet Amos: "Dirshuni Viheyu - Seek Me, and live." These, I would suggest, are the two aspects of a life of Torah: to seek God (and as we have already seen, to seek Torah, and God through Torah), and to live. To really live, heart, mind, body, and soul. Remember that seeking God should always culminate in living more deeply, more richly, more presently and compassionately and attentively. So seek God this summer, and for the rest of your lives, and don't ever forget to really live.
As we continue to build this new reality, I invite each and every one you to become our partner in Torah: come to this Beit Midrash and study, on your own or with a chavruta; come often, but if you can't, come at least once. Support us financially, which means: support these students on their journeys, and help us provide them with the very best faculty and mentorship possible; help us help them to build a new, and newly invigorated, Jewish world. This is a time for dreaming, but it also, crucially, a time for doing.
The masses despair, but the prophets respond. Let us be among the heirs of the prophets, and meet this hour together.
Thank you all, each and every one of you, for your faith and support. It means the world to us.
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