I'm traveling to Colorado today for a very brief visit (flying west today, and back east on Friday -- truly short and sweet!) in order to speak at a Colorado University Embodied Judaism Symposium on the Freedom Seder (about which I posted recently.)

I've grown accustomed to going to Boulder once a year for the OHALAH conference of Jewish Renewal clergy, and a couple of summers ago I traveled there in August for the Remembering Reb Zalman memorial. But it feels a little bit strange to be going there for a purpose other than davening, learning, and reconnecting with my Jewish Renewal hevre (beloved colleague-friends).

Of course, I do expect to see some of my hevre at this symposium. The conference is honoring Rabbi Arthur Waskow, who has been a part of Jewish Renewal from the beginning. And there are some wonderful Jewish Renewal folks who call Boulder home, some of whom will probably be joining us. But this symposium is an academic enterprise, not an explicitly spiritual one, and it's open to a broad audience, not just Jewish Renewal clergy.

Colorado University is graciously putting me up at the Boulderado, a beautiful old hotel in downtown Boulder. That feels like a strange kind of homecoming too, because my first several OHALAH conferences were held there! (I still have fond memories of a late-night liturgy class there in the hotel bar.) I suspect that as I walk through the building, I will perennially feel as though I am almost glimpsing old friends and dear teachers just out of the corner of my eye.

If you'll be at the symposium, I hope you'll come up and say hi! Once the event is over there will be guided tours of the Freedom Seder exhibit and the exhibit on the work of Reb Arthur, and I imagine I will be hanging around there chatting with whoever wants to talk. I'll post my slides on Friday, so stay tuned...