I'm writing this in a willful pause as I wade through the 150 or so emails I've let build up over the last few days. It's been that busy since I got back from my month in New York. A flurry of deadlines converging at once. I think I'm doing alright. And to be honest, all this work and activity has readjusted me to life in London. Plus it's quite fun stuff. I led a drama workshop on Wednesday at Alperton Community School, the first of ten sessions on the topic of domestic violence against women. We meet each week and the teenagers ultimately create some kind of performance to show their peers or parents. Then yesterday fellow-housemate Daniel and I led a drama and rap/poetry workshop to Jewish kids on the subject of self-esteem youth issues.
But perhaps most interesting was the panel I was on, this Wednesday night. I was asked to speak to the Adam Science Foundation Leadership programme and its alumni about innovation in the British Jewish community. I was alongside someone from the JCC, someone from Limmud and Trevor Pears of the Pears foundation. In the course of the conversation, which was very interesting, we identified a split, between those who want change and the development of new, engaged ways of being Jewish, and those who would rather sit back, pay their shul fees for their burial rights and accept the same old. Why change?
Because every society needs a growing edge. The bark of a tree grows old. It becomes the core but if there is no new layer the tree will die.
"Why change?" is what they said to the Baal Shem Tov too.
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