Kabbalat Shabbat @ Burning Man

Camp Sukkat Shalom welcomes Shabbat in Black Rock City.

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• Wandering Jew
• JTAWandering Jew
• Burning Man

[HartmanInstitute]

Why is a guy putting on tallit and tefillin if it's Kabbalat Shabbat? And the Shofar? Am I just too conventional for words?

[joelstanley1]

Oh and re. the shofar... it was Ellul. Traditional to hear the shofar every day, right?

[oren1neu1dag]

איזה גדולים אתם!!!

ישראלי ויהודי גאה!

[IWantToKnowChrist]

@joelstanley1 thanks brother, i was just saying what i thought and mean no harm, being a gentile believer in christ, i am not under the old covenant laws of moses, so i do not understand it as much as you do. but as long as you are worshipping The god of Abraham, and mean to do it well, then you're alright with me. i know the other guy made a remark about it being at burning man, i think that it is a good thing to have a place of worship for the one true god, in a wilderness of sin. shalom!

[joelstanley1]

@IWantToKnowChrist thanks for your thoughts. I think I understand where you're coming from. However, you and I disagree on a number of fundamental things to do with religion and spirituality, namely the roles and definitions of "the imagination," "god's Laws," "paganism," "Jewish," and "righteousness."

[IWantToKnowChrist]

@joelstanley1 the imagination can be a cruel and horrible thing to blend with god's Laws. this seems a good bit more pagan than Jewish, remember numbers account for little, especially if the wrong ideals are set forth. if you bend god to suit the people, the people will come, but they will not be made righteous and they will not change.

[joelstanley1]

@3cho613 Fair enough. You're right it wasn't an entirely traditional service, but one in which we tried to blend tradition and creativity - very successfully according to the vast majority of the people there.

I personally don't think Burning Man is idolatrous, certainly not in the spirit that many of our camp and community entered into it. But you and I have quite different conceptual frames on this, I'm sure.

[3cho613]

@joelstanley1 Not traditional to blow shofar before sundown. and not traditional to blow it the way he did. Also, it's definitely NOT traditional to wrap tefillin without a shirt on. God gave Adam and Chava (Eve) clothes for a reason. You could even say it's disrespectful, though I'm sure it wasn't his intention, to wrap tefillin while unclothed. The biggest problem, I would think, would be the fact that this took place at burning man. If anything is similar to idolatry today, it's that.