RJ Blog

When It’s Hard to Believe Life Will Get Better 
By Billy Dreskin

In this week’s double parashah, B’har/B’chukotai, we read (among many other topics) of the mitzvah to observe the yovel, the fiftieth “Jubilee” year. From the second half of Leviticus 25:10: “It shall be a jubilee for you: each of you shall return to your holding and each of you shall return to your family.” Read more…

By Eli Cooper

NFTY-Northern is made up of 11 active, very distinct and different, temple youth groups (TYGs). Each and every one has its own quirks and individualities. The TYGs all have their own triumphs and struggles. They all have different events that go on throughout the year, whether it be cooking and distributing Thanksgiving meals for hundreds of less fortunate families in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area or attending a sleep out to promote awareness of teen homelessness. What makes our TYG’s different aren’t the events that we hold or even the people that are in them.  It’s our synagogues (maybe communities would be a good word).

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As someone who grew up reading Little Golden Books in which mommies and daddies take care of their obedient children, I love how Maurice Sendak’s stories, by contrast, dive right into the fray of real life—warts and all.  As a librarian, I also appreciate what a pioneer Sendak was and how his stories and illustrations broke barriers in children’s literature.  I love the edgy realness of his characters—and especially relate to bratty Pierre of I-don’t-care fame who reminds me of my young self answering my own mother.  Sendak’s kids are not gift wrapped with pretty paper or shiny bows.  Like him, they’re real and gritty and honest.

Sendak was not a mainstream guy; he ignored conventional rules.  Lower class, Jewish and gay, he only wanted to be straight, so his parents could be happy, he told The New York Times in a 2008 interview. “They never, never, never knew.”  Add in his sickly growing-up years, the Depression, World War II and the Holocaust, in which many of his family’s relatives perished, as well as the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby in 1932 and is it any wonder that little Murray Sendak was anything but fearful and insecure in his Bensonhurst apartment?  Is it any wonder that these fears and insecurities are reflected heavily in his works? Read more…

Like all parents, I have many hopes and dreams for my children. On one level, I just hope I don’t screw them up too much. But above all, I dream: each will grow into the best of who he or she is meant to be and fulfill his or her life’s unique purpose. Each will experience success, know failure, and be a better human being as a result of both. Each will be rooted in and wrestle with their faith, and be stronger for both. I hope they will be truth-tellers, justice-seekers, and good neighbors. I dream they will be and feel free to love and be loved in return. And I pray that when they look in the mirror, they will be content and proud of the person they see.

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by Aaron Selkow

I sat in a classroom last week with fellow URJ camp directors Rabbi Mark Covitz (GUCI) and Bobby Harris (Coleman), along with my colleague at Camp Harlam, Rabbi Vicki Tuckman. There was a graph mapped out on the floor with lots of different papers spread across it, and there were more than 40 Israeli staff (Shlichim, or “emissaries”) sitting around the room. These staff members will be travelling to work with our camps this summer, including 26 at Harlam, and the classroom was at Kibbutz Shefayim in Israel. This was my tenth time at the Summer Shlichim Seminar; my first time as the director at Harlam.

The papers on the floor were meant to convey the sense of connection to and knowledge of Israel by three different constituencies at camp: ourselves, the staff, and the campers. My small blue piece of paper was sitting amongst many in the quadrant that represented moderate knowledge and extremely strong connection to Israel. I know that our staff members were very pleased to see where I placed my paper, and I know this because I had the chance to sit with them at a meal the next day when they asked about it: “Aaron, you really like Israel, huh?”

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by Alexis Kashar

As a mom with three hearing children, I volunteer in many venues, including my children’s elementary school. I also happen to be deaf and communicate primarily through sign language when presenting to groups. It has become a tradition of sorts for me to present annually to the second-grade classes at my children’s school to help raise awareness of what it means to be a deaf person. On this particular morning, my son who is in the fourth grade joined me for the first time. This time, the sign language interpreter did not show up, which meant my communications with the class would not be as easy as usual. I decided to keep it light by letting the kids lead the discussion and ask me questions. None of the questions were new to me: “Can you drive?” “Can you read?” “How do you wake up in the morning?” “How do you know if there are police sirens?” “How do you make a phone call?” and the like. I guess my son was surprised at their misconceptions of deaf people because he started telling them about some of the cases I handled as a civil rights attorney and letting them know I was capable of the same kinds of things as their parents. I heard from some of the parents that evening that their kids were fascinated with how we are all the same in our own way and how technology levels the playing field for many of us.

However, when my son and I had a chance to debrief that night, he shared with me how surprising it was to him to have people ask me if I can drive and read. I explained to him that I am probably the first deaf person many of them have met and this is how people learn about how we are same and different at once.

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By Rabbi Joshua S. Taub

The chief executive of a large company was greatly admired for his energy and drive. But he suffered from one embarrassing weakness: each time he entered the president’s office to make his weekly report he would wet his pants!

The kindly president advised him to see an urologist at company expense. But when he appeared before the president the following week, his pants were wet again! “Didn’t you see the urologist?” Asked the president.

“No, he was out. I saw a psychiatrist instead, and I’m cured,” the executive replied. “I no longer feel embarrassed!”

- The Spirituality of Imperfection, Kurtz & Ketchem

Imperfection is a reality of our existence. While my mother insists I am perfect, Ralph Waldo Emerson more accurately speaks the truth when he says “there is a crack in everything God has made.” It can be a revelatory moment in our lives when we recognize and embrace our imperfections. After all, it is only through our “cracks” that God’s light is able to shine and illuminate the world. Read more…

By Barry Shainker

Confirmation, a fundamental part of Reform Judaism for more than a century, is, I must admit, a topic I knew little about until I was a sophomore in high school. Although I knew early on that Confirmation was a special ceremony held three years after bar or bat mitzvah for those students who chose to continue in religious school, I knew nothing of its significance on the Jewish calendar, its place in Reform, or the symbolism it represents. Both my parents were confirmed, and they told me about the beauty and power of the occasion, but walking down the hallway of the synagogue lined with Confirmation class pictures, I wondered why teens would want to wear fancy robes and engage in intense study.

During that 10th grade year, I learned much about the milestone and all that it represents. As early as the 19th century, Reform rabbis believed that 13 is too young for a child to affirm a lifetime commitment to Jewish tradition and practice, and thus the Confirmation service was developed. It usually is held when young people reach 16, and are considered more mature in their understanding of a truly Jewish lifestyle. Using this reasoning, it is easy to see why Confirmation initially took the place of bar or bat mitzvah in Reform synagogues. Over time, of course, that position was modified, and today many teens have the distinct honor of becoming both a bar or bat mitzvah and a confirmand.

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by Joy Weinberg

On May 20, 2012 – only 10 days from now! – I will be marrying E., the Jewish woman I love. (I call her E. here because as a therapist, she maintains strict boundaries between her professional and private life.) We will stand under the flowing, stunning, yellow, orange, red, and turquoise chuppah that she designed and painted on silk (a painstakingly challenging design process for a beginner, but that’s another blog post). We will drink from a sparkling, cobalt blue wine goblet that says in Hebrew, “Ani leh-dodee veh-dodee lee,” “I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine.” And, because none of our parents are still living, we will wonder: What would they have thought? For me in particular, Would my parents have attended our nuptials? And: Might the pronouncement of President Barack Obama – the first sitting U.S. president to vocalize his support for same-sex marriage – have changed their decision?

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by Rabbi Bonnie Margulis

Years ago, as an undergraduate at NYU, I was working on my senior honors thesis, “On the Ordination of Women as Rabbis.” It had been only 11 years since the first woman was ordained, but it was more than half a lifetime ago for me, and so seemed a very long time ago. It never occurred to me that I could try to go see Rabbi Sally Priesand and interview her. She was in Morristown, I was in Paramus – just an hour away, but who knew?  Today I kick myself that I was so dumb. But I did write to her, and ever gracious, Sally replied with a kind note and copies of articles that had been written around the time of her ordination. Little did I know that years later, through my work at the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice and my service on the Women Rabbinic Network’s Social Justice Committee, I would be privileged to know Sally as a mentor and a friend. Sally is unfailingly generous in giving of her time and wisdom to her younger colleagues, passionate in her commitment to social justice, and kind and patient with all the many requests she receives from students wanting to connect with the first woman rabbi. I’d like to extend a hearty Mazal Tov to Sally, with much love and admiration!

While we are celebrating Rabbi Sally Priesand’s ordination, and not to take anything away from her achievement, I think it is important to remember the women pioneers who came before and paved the way. Among them, and too often forgotten, is Rabbi Regina Jonas. For while it is true that Sally Priesand is the first woman to be ordained and acknowledged as rabbi by a movement of Judaism, she is not actually the first woman to be ordained. That distinction goes to Regina Jonas.

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