December 31, 2007
Rabbi Shefa Gold singing SASSON V'SIMKHAH
Posted by yudel at 5:27 PM | Comments (0)
March 30, 2007
New Mexico Jewish Link on Torah Journeys: "A Trip" of Spiritual Discovery
Paula Amar Schwartz reviews Torah Journeys for The New Mexico Jewish Link (pdf download) :Rabbi Shefa Gold’s new book, Torah Journeys, is a trip. It’s not a trip through the scenic byways of northern New Mexico, or along Route 66. It is a journey along an ancient and venerable Jewish pathway of spiritual and personal discovery.What makes it so special is that it takes the difficult and often obscure, and makes it accessible, and in so doing opens our hearts, and speaks to our yearning soul.
Our tradition teaches us that it is our responsibility to study Torah daily, and prescribes a portion of Torah for every week of the calendar year. For many contemporary Jews, observing that Mitzvah can be challenging, partly because some portions are dense and difficult to understand, and partly because many of us have limited Hebrew skills, or lack the scholarly skills needed to reach into these ancient texts and decode their meaning.
Another aspect of the challenge is that, for many of us, the chapters of rules, or the counting and naming of Tribes, or the descriptions of Temple rituals is arcane at best, and appears irrelevant to our current lives.
Torah Journeys offers a threefold way of approaching each Torah portion: What is the blessing of this chapter? What is its spiritual challenge? And then, a suggested technique to practice coming to understand ourselves in relationship to the wisdom of this section of Torah.
That seems like a tall order, but it is done simply, with compassion and a great deal of psychological awareness of issues that hold the attention of contemporary seekers of spiritual awareness.
Posted by yudel at 12:18 PM | Comments (0)
February 8, 2007
New Jersey Jewish News reviews Torah Journeys
The New Jersey Jewish News features a brief review of Torah Journeys in its Books in short column this week:
Heart and soul
The Jewish Renewal movement is all mysticism, spirituality, and a decidedly experiential approach to prayer and study. With Torah Journeys: the Inner Path to the Promised Land (Ben Yehuda Press, $19.95), Rabbi Shefa Gold has written what might be called the first Jewish Renewal Torah commentary.
Gold, trained as both a Renewal and Reconstructionist rabbi, mines the week's Torah readings for spiritual and mystical insights, and then offers readers a "practice" meant to internalize the teachings. These include breathing exercises and meditations that reflect her study of the world's religions.
Sounds New Agey--y, and it is, but if you're the kind of person seeking a Judaism that speaks to the heart as well as the brain, it might be just the right book for you.
Posted by yudel at 4:10 PM
January 28, 2007
"Torah Journeys" listed by Beliefnet as one of best Jewish books of 2006
Beliefnet blogger Rabbi Joshua Waxman names Torah Journeys: The Inner Path to the Promised Land by Rabbi Shefa Gold as one of the year's best Jewish books:Rabbi Gold has been a long-time teacher and song-leader in the Jewish Renewal movement, and her recordings of Jewish chant have been a point of entry for many into the words of our sacred texts. Her first book, Torah Journeys, is an exploration of the weekly portion written from the perspective of spiritual growth and development, and contains some remarkable insights and practices that are both profound and accessible.Ask for Torah Journeys at your local Jewish bookstore, buy it at Amazon, or save 10% and get free shipping from the publisher (limited time only).
Posted by yudel at 1:55 PM
September 20, 2006
Jewish Ledger interviews Rabbi Shefa Gold
The Jewish Ledger speaks to Rabbi Shefa Gold about Torah Journeys: The Inner Path to the Promised Land:
Take a few words from a prayer in the siddur or a short verse from the Torah. Look at what those words really mean and how they connect with your life. Now add a melody, and chant those words mindfully and repeatedly and meditatively based on your newfound understanding of them. Add 50 or 100 men and women chanting that one prayer, those few words for, say five minutes n often with harmonic parts or in intricate rounds, and you begin to appreciate what Rabbi Shefa Gold brings to the art of Jewish liturgy.
full story here, reprinted below:
Jewish Renewal rabbi takes people on a journey through the Torah
By Leonard Felson
Take a few words from a prayer in the siddur or a short verse from the Torah. Look at what those words really mean and how they connect with your life. Now add a melody, and chant those words mindfully and repeatedly and meditatively based on your newfound understanding of them. Add 50 or 100 men and women chanting that one prayer, those few words for, say five minutes n often with harmonic parts or in intricate rounds, and you begin to appreciate what Rabbi Shefa Gold brings to the art of Jewish liturgy.
Now, the popular Jewish Renewal rabbi, best known for the hundreds of unique chants she’s composed from the liturgy, has written her first book called, “Torah Journeys: The Inner Path to the Promised Land” (Ben Yehuda Press). She will speak about the book, and lead chants, next Thursday, Sept. 28, at 7:30 p.m. at the Hartford Seminary, 77 Sherman St., in Hartford. The evening is co-sponsored by Congregation P’nai Or and the Seminary.
Speaking from her home in New Mexico n she grew up in a Conservative Jewish household in New Jersey, Gold says the event will provide “a little taste of the book by taking people on a journey through the Torah.
“There’s a way I understand and receive the Torah as a journey of the soul and it’s been a very useful text in my own spiritual life to reflect on the inner landscape. I don’t read it as a historical document or even as a document of the mitzvot or commandments,” says Gold.
Instead, as she reads it, she asks of every chapter, every verse and often, every word, where’s the blessing here? “And I have my eyes peeled and ears cocked to what are the spiritual challenges being given n so when I come across a passage that triggers me in someway or upsets me or makes me defensive n those become doorways to understanding what the spiritual challenges are that Torah is pointing out.” But her reading of the Torah doesn’t end there.
Once she’s uncovered those challenges, Gold says, she asks herself what’s the practice I need to do to rise to the spiritual challenge and to receive the blessing of Torah.
Gold, who is a leader in ALEPH: the Alliance for Jewish Renewal, received her ordination both from the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College and from Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi. She has produced nine albums and her liturgies have been published in several new prayer books. She teaches at workshops and retreats on the theory and art of chanting, spiritual community building and mediation.The book lays out this practice and is organized in chapters following the 54 parshiot or portions of the Torah that come in a year. With Bereshit or Genesis, the first portion of the Torah, Gold concludes, for example, that the blessing comes with the realization of physical reality or “the palace” as the Zohar describes Creation. It moves on to uncover a spiritual challenge when G-d asks Adam, “Where are you?” Adam responds by hiding, saying, “I was afraid because I was naked.”
That interchange unveils a spiritual challenge, according to Gold, who writes: “The spiritual challenge of this Beginning time is to know that we are utterly naked and vulnerable. Yet rather than hide, we are challenged to stand in our nakedness…We are required to stand in our vulnerability, to open to the power that moves through us.”
Between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, Gold and Rabbi David Ingber will lead a retreat over Shabbat Shuvah, Sept. 29-30, at the Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center in Falls Village. The two also will lead a Yom Kippur retreat there Oct. 1-2.
For Gold, she says, the special Shabbat of return between the two major holidays, “is meant to prepare us to rise to the challenge of Yom Kippur.” Each program will include chanting and opportunities for participants to examine issues they are going through in their lives.
“The way I experience Yom Kippur is almost as a death and rebirth experience,” she says.
Posted by yudel at 3:59 PM