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When I was in college, pulling an all-nighter was a real thrill. Burning the midnight oil, I thought, was an exercise in devotion, a testament to the fires of my imagination. I now know better. I’d much rather be sleeping at 3 in the morning than shaping and reshaping my sentences, drowning my frustrations in mug after mug of black tea.

Mt. Sinai/Providence Lith. Co.
Mt. Sinai/Providence Lith. Co.

There’s one night of the year, though, when I still relish the prospect of staying up until the wee hours of the morn and tumbling, bleary-eyed, into bed when everyone else is heading to work, and that’s Erev Shavuoth, or, as it’s increasingly known, Tikkun Leil Shavuoth.

An age-old custom that has taken hold of the contemporary Jewish imagination, the Tikkun has arguably become one of the fastest-growing and most popular moments on the Jewish calendar. Even the most optimistic of observers would never, ever have predicted that the practice of staying up all night to study Torah would flourish in modern-day America -- and flourish among all segments of the Jewish population, not just among its most traditional and observant members.

Dressed in suits or in t-shirts, sporting yarmulkes or some other form of headgear, people gather together in droves. Some show up just for the cheesecake, others for the company and still others for the madcap fun of it all. Many of the attendees are drawn by the programming which tends to be as diverse and varied as they are. At the 14th Street Y Into the Night, you can study gemara, familiarize yourself with the meaning of shmita, stretch your limbs and listen to Bach. Further uptown, at the JCC of Manhattan Shavuot, offerings range from Israeli dance and cooking classes to an intensive encounter with Megillat Ruth.

However you explain it -- as an exercise in pluralism, an expression of postdenominationalism, a version of DIY Judaism, a form of neo-Hasidism, an instance of Jewish renewal -- by whatever name, the joint is jumping come 10 p.m. on Erev Shavouth and remains in motion until sunrise.

Be there. It’s probably as close as any of us will ever get to Mount Sinai.

Say you blundered one wet and dreary evening into a town hall meeting in downtown Manhattan and sought to take its measure by listening attentively to the words bandied about by those in the know, words such as ‘ebb and flow,’ ‘cycle,’ ‘crisis,’ and ‘ecosystem.’ You might easily have come away thinking that the matter at hand had to do with stewarding the environment.

Town hall meeting. Sage Ross / Wikipedia.

You wouldn’t be entirely wrong, but in this instance the environment in question was not Mother Nature’s but rather, the American Jewish community or, more to the point, its relationship to Jewish forms of cultural expression.

Some of the culture mavens at the town hall meeting that evening – a glittering array of talent representative of the “new Jewish culture” -  believed that the relationship between the two was enfeebled, perhaps even on “life support.”  Others thought it healthy and vital.

Some placed a premium on the kind of affirmation that comes from a strong sense of self, insisting fervently on the integrity of the idiosyncratic.  Others underscored the primacy of Jewish cultural literacy, claiming equally as fervently that contemporary American Jews would be well served were they to “connect to something larger than themselves.” ...continue reading "Ecosystem"