RJ Blog

by Rabbi Rick Schechter

It’s the black sheep of the Jewish calendar—unfortunately. Shavuot, the Feast of Weeks, is a holy day often overshadowed and overlooked in the contemporary Jewish world.

How could this have happened? It had such an auspicious start. The Torah considers Shavuot a major Jewish festival—right up there with Passover and Sukkot. In ancient times, it was thus distinguished as one of the three pilgrimage festivals in which all of Israel would travel to Jerusalem to celebrate. Even more so, after the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in 70 C.E., the ancient rabbis renewed and deepened Shavuot’s meaning: it is not only a major spring harvest festival, it is the very anniversary of God’s revelation to the entire Jewish people at Mount Sinai. Shavuot commemorates the giving and receiving of the Torah, the Jewish people’s greatest treasure. What could be more important than that?!

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Next Wednesday, May 23, will be a big day for our family.

That night, my wife, Dana Gershon, the outgoing president of The Rashi School’s board of trustees, will be honored at the school’s annual dinner. Dana has been president of the board for two years and, with four daughters, all of whom are Rashi students, we spend a lot of time at 8000 Great Meadow Road in Dedham, where we’re all part of the wonderful kehillah that is Rashi. Needless to say, between meetings, classes, sports, parent-teacher conferences, plays, t’filah, and more, it’s very often where our family hangs out. Read more…

by Ruby Macsai-Goren

As a typical teenager, I do a lot of extra-curricular and academic activities, attend high school, and spend lots of time with my family and friends.

However, I spend minimal to no time learning about Israel. I know very little about Israel; my knowledge is extended to what I have learned from my years in Hebrew school and what I know from my Middle Eastern History class.

While I have had the limited opportunity to learn about Israeli politics, I have no idea what the culture and land itself is like.

I am incredibly excited to travel with NFTY to Israel to learn all about Israeli culture, people, climate, land, terrain, and many more things that I would never be able to truly understand without visiting Israel. Visiting such a beautiful country is one of the things I am most looking forward to.

Additionally, I am very excited to spend time with other Jewish teens. I don’t belong to a youth group at home, so this trip will be one of the first times I am surrounded by kids my age that all share the same religious background. I am also ecstatic to make new friends, and I know my Israel trip will be a memory I will keep for the rest of my life.

I know my group will be a great team of kids. I’m sure we will have a blast traveling, hiking, camping, shopping, and learning while on this trip. I expect to learn more about Israel as a place and to get to know what life as an Israeli teen would be like. In addition, I can’t wait to find out all about the beautiful land in Israel. All in all, I am incredibly excited and cannot wait for this upcoming summer!

Ruby Macsai-Goren is a 2012 NFTY in Israel Participant from Evanston, IL.

This is the first in a series of profiles of participants who will be joining us this summer in Israel on NFTY in Israel, KESHER Taglit-Birthright Israel, and the NFTY-EIE High School in Israel. We asked people to share what they are expecting, anticipating, and most looking forward to. If you’ll be joining us in Israel this summer and would like to write for this feature on our blog, send us an email at rjisrael@urj.org!

Originally posted at Youth and College Israel Programs: The Blog

by Bobby Harris

Last week I was in Israel attending the Jewish Agency for Israel’s Summer Staff Seminar where, together with many of the URJ Camp Directors, I met with and helped to prepare the Israeli staff who have been hired to come and work at our  URJ camps this summer.  During the seminar, we provide the Israeli staff the opportunity to participate in a camp like Shabbat service that might take place at one of our camps. I was asked to present a D’var Torah, and I chose to relate the Parsha to everything that we have done at Coleman over the past five years to advocate for the release of Gilad Shalit who was returned to his family last fall after being held for 5 years in captivity by Hamas.

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Once, a man threw a party and invited his friend Kamtza. The messenger made a mistake and delivered the invitation to the man’s enemy Bar-Kamtza. When Bar-Kamtza showed up the host tried to convince him to leave and Bar Kamtza tried to convince the host to let him stay; in the end he was forcibly evicted. He said: “Since the leaders of the community were present and didn’t intervene, I’ll get my revenge on the whole community by inciting the emperor against them.” And so he did; thus was the destruction of the Temple and the loss of our sovereignty the result of gratuitous hatred.
-Babylonian Talmud, Gitin 56a (abridged)

So who could have prevented our destruction? The messenger? The host? Bar Kamtza? The leaders? The emperor? All of the above? Read more…

About 200 Jewish activists, rabbis, and communal leaders gathered in New York City for the Jewish Organizing Institute and Network for Justice’s (JOIN for Justice) recent National Summit. At the summit, JOIN for Justice honored the URJ’s Senior Vice President Rabbi Jonah Pesner with the Tekiah Social Justice Award.

Rabbi Pesner was honored for his work as a pioneer in the field of Jewish organizing and particularly for founding Just Congregations, the URJ’s groundbreaking community organizing effort. During his 20-year career, he has engaged thousands of synagogue congregants to join together in successful campaigns for health care access, affordable housing, public education, gay and lesbian rights, and rights for nursing care workers.

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I was blessed to have had the opportunity to become a rabbi and serve the Jewish community in a time when the doors to the rabbinate were open to women. As we celebration the 40^th anniversary of Sally Priesand’s ordination, I am acutely aware that this was not always the case. Rabbi Priesand and the generation of pioneering women who came before me pushed through closed doors and laid out a welcome mat for women like me. We owe them a debt of gratitude for their perseverance.

I am also reminded of the generations of women who came before them – women to banged on the doors, nudged them ever so slightly, and loosened the hinges of those closed doors. They may never be feted the way we mark the milestones of Rabbi Priesand’s ordination, but surely they deserve a nod from us at moments like this. Read more…

My grandfather raised three independent daughters. Long before many women worked outside the home, my mother and her sisters had careers. Until each married, they worked in the family business. One aunt went on to have her own business, another worked for aerospace division of McDonnell Douglas, and my mother spent most of her career working in the apparel industry. All were strong women who balanced family, career, and community responsibilities.

My grandfather also wanted his daughters to have access to Jewish education and to be able to participate fully in Jewish life. So, back in the 1920s, though raised in an Orthodox home, he and my grandmother joined a Reform congregation, Temple Ahavath Sholom in Brooklyn. They were active members, and my mother often spoke of her connection the temple. During their lifetimes, my mother and my two aunts were all active in their Jewish communities. They joined and supported synagogues and communal organizations.

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By Rabbi Marc Katz

The history and theology behind our Jewish holidays can be found most clearly in the panoply of names that the Jewish tradition has used to identify them. The upcoming holiday of Shavuot is no different. From its agricultural roots during Biblical times to modernity, its many names tell a story and teach us how we should feel, act, and connect to God during the festival.

Shavuot gets it most recognizable name from a few mentions in the Bible, most notably Exodus 34:22-23. Appearing in a list of important ritual laws dictated during the giving of the second set of tablets, Shavuot stands as one of three important festivals.  God tells Moses, “You shall observe the Festival of Weeks, of the first fruits of the wheat harvest; and the Festival of Ingathering at the turn of the year. Three times a year all your males shall appear before the Sovereign, the God of Israel.”

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