Tel Aviv
The Aviv (Spring) Sangha – Tel Aviv
Meeting Location: members’ homes
Time: Wednesday 20:00-22:00
The Sangha is open also online.
For details:
Marietta Oppenheimer, Tel: 054-4933492
Rachel Maori, Tel: 052-2390075
Sangha members write…
Rachel Maori:
It is with much emotion that I write about the sangha in Tel Aviv that was founded around 1999.
I took part in a retreat in Kibbutz Harel in 1997. I could say without exaggerating that that retreat changed my life and I looked for a way to implement this so-important practice in my life and the lives of others.
Two years prior, Michael, a dear Jew, living in France, who had brought Thay to Israel, also brought Lynn Fine, a dharma teacher ordained by Thay.
At the end of that wondrous retreat, Michael encouraged us to form a sangha in Tel Aviv. He initiated a meeting in one of the houses and taught us how to conduct the meeting. While he was here, he facilitated a number of meetings.The meetings lasted 2.5 hours. They included a guided meditation, mindful walking, silent meditation, mindful eating, reading a text and mindful sharing (talking meditation). I had a clear view that I was leaving these meetings differently than I was entering them. I was so grateful for this practice.
Immediately after Michael left, a number of people who realized the greatness of the practice committed themselves to continue the meetings. I remember Dana, Orly, Sally, Yossi, Jacky, Shlomi, and some others who I regret to have forgotten their names.
Dana, Orly, Yossi and I are still loyal and committed to the sangha meetings, and especially to the practice.
Since then many good people had joined the meetings. I will not mention all their names but many people contribute their abilities: facilitating, hosting, and organizing for the Tel-Aviv sangha and of course the Israeli sangha.
We still meet every Wednesday in the houses of people who have the place to host. We have a number of facilitators. Of course people come and go but we have a stable core that persists.
Corona has changed things a little, and sometimes the meetings are held on Zoom for those who cannot attend otherwise.
There aren’t enough words to express my deepest thanks to the sangha. Even though 22 years have passed, the sangha keeps supporting me and I do not see my life without it.The study of Thay is deep, members sometimes share difficult issues. We apply Thay’s teachings by sharing our suffering and our joy. Naturally not every meeting penetrates the soul. Things change, as we have learned about impermanence. Sometimes there are conflicts, like everything in life. But we still learn and practice, together generating the sangha wisdom and trying to realize Thay’s legacy that the next Buddha is the Sangha.
by Rachel Maori
Dana:
In 1997 I was sitting one evening at Suzanne Dellal Center, listening to a lecture by a Vietnamese monk called Thich Nhat Hanh. I had no idea who he was and what I was doing there. The monk sat on the floor, surrounded by several very tired nuns (they had come straight from Ben Gurion Airport) – and described how to peel an orange mindfully. One nun was dozing and almost fell on her face and I stifled a stupid giggle and wondered who peels an orange so slowly these days.
The answer I found a few months later, on a retreat in Kibbutz Inbar. Michael, who had brought Thay for his first and only visit in Israel, came again, accompanied by Lynn Fine, a Dharma Teacher from the States. There it was that the penny dropped and… I fell in love. I was awed by the practice, the path, the Dharma, and I also fell in love in hind sight with Thay, whom I had been so wrong about at Suzanne Dellal.
In Kibbutz Inbar we had decided to set up a Sangha in Tel Aviv, in addition to the one already existing in Jerusalem. Michael stayed here for a few weeks, taught us all that was needed and guided us, until we were independent.
Since then many things had happened in the world, people had come and gone. Of the original founders only Rachel, Yossi, Orly and I remained. But the Sangha is alive and kicking, proving beyond all doubt that the path is stronger than those who walk it.
by Dana