Reform Judaism: November 2008 Archives

When the Yizkor list gets long...
November 30, 2008 (3 Comments)

Out of a discussion about Yizkor and Yahrzeit; an exhibit on Dubuque's Jews...

by Karin Pritikin
Vice President, Temple Beth El, Dubuque
Project Director/Exhibit Developer-
The Alexander Levi Heritage Project

In 2007, Temple Beth El in Dubuque, an extension of two older congregations, had 27 households--and more than 400 names on its Yizkor/Yahrzeit list. Some members felt the list was too lengthy to read on the High Holidays, while others believed strongly that reading the list was a powerful way to maintain a connection to those who built Dubuque's Jewish community which, though small, still thrives.

When several of us expressed the desire to explore the creation of a Yizkor/Yahrzeit fund to honor those on the list whose families were no longer living, or in the area, it led to an interesting discovery. The impending 175th anniversary of the city's founding coincided with the 175th anniversary of the arrival of Alexander Levi, Dubuque's first Jew, the state's first naturalized citizen; and the founder, in 1857, of the city's first Jewish congregation.

Filed Under: Community | Lifecycle

A Sense of Shabbat Worship
November 28, 2008 (3 Comments)

by Rabbi Victor S. Appell
Director, Small Congregations,
Union for Reform Judaism
Just yesterday at dinner, my seven year old son asked why we never sign him and his brother up for "Parent's Night Out." This is a program run by our local YMCA. Once a month on a Friday evening, parents can drop their children off at the Y for several hours of babysitting. While the parents get to go out, their children enjoy pizza and a movie along with their friends. We explained that Friday evening was Shabbat and a time we spend together as a family. It always involves dinner, either at our home, or at the home of friends. When our temple has a Shabbat Alive or Family Service, we try to attend. As a family, we seem to have figured out Friday evenings. My three year old asks all week when it will be Shabbat. And my seven year old, channeling some inner-Chasid, could eat an entire challah, piece by piece, dipping each piece into his grape juice.

Filed Under: Shabbat

For the Blessings that Have Been Our Common Lot
November 26, 2008 (3 Comments)

by JanetheWriter
It seems plausible that Thanksgiving as we know it today derives originally from our tradition's Sukkot. Whether or not this is, in fact, true, in our consumer-driven, must-have-the-latest-greatest-gadget, me-me-me society, this autumnal chag is a wonderful opportunity to step back, to reflect on what really matters and, individually and collectively, to celebrate our many blessings.

In my family, Thanksgiving minhag dictates that someone (usually my mother) reads a poem, prayer or other seasonal passage before we dig in. Last year, a few days before the holiday, Connecticut Governor Wilbur L. Cross' 1936 Thanksgiving proclamation crossed my desk and it was I who read it at our Thanksgiving table.

Filed Under: Holidays | Jewish Living

The Saga Continues - Isaac and Rebecca II
November 26, 2008

by Larry Kaufman
Toldot was my bar mitzvah parashah, but in my Conservative synagogue, the whole emphasis was on chanting the haftarah - comprehension of the content and translation of the text was not on anybody's mind, and certainly not on mine. Today, I approach texts with only enough Hebrew to frequently be dissatisfied with the translations supplied in my collection of Torah commentaries. Toldot, all these years after my first encounter with it, is no exception.

Filed Under: Torah

Strengthening Reform 19: Reasons for the Ethical Mitzvot
November 24, 2008 (10 Comments)

by William Berkson
As I have written earlier, Reform is now in a "great mitzvah muddle," in which a number of leaders are not clear about the reasons for the mitzvot, and have written of each person deciding what is a mitzvah. This is an inclusive approach, which is fine, but alas directionless.

What is missing here is a clearer idea of what is traditionally called ta'amei hamitzvot, the reasons for the mitzvot. In traditional Judaism, these reasons are secondary, because the sacred text is the final authority for a mitzvah, even if its interpretation is open to wide interpretation. In liberal Judaism, however, the text is only one source of our decisions about what God wants of us, so the other reasons become more important.

Filed Under: Defining Reform

Now playing at your local synaplex. Cineplex?
November 24, 2008 (3 Comments)

by Larry Kaufman
This news just in - the Brits are making a movie based on the parashah Chayei Sarah. They're calling it Two Weddings and Two Funerals. The Israeli version will add the six britot- milah for Abraham's sons by Wife Number Three, Keturah, and will be called Hatching, Matching and Dispatching.

Seriously, though, how ironic it is that a sedrah called The Life of Sarah begins with her death and burial! Her death is treated very matter-of-factly in the text, and has been the subject of much rabbinic speculation tying her demise to her dismay over the Akedah, the binding of Isaac. While there's nothing definitive in the previous parashah about where she was while Abraham and Isaac were out mountain climbing, we learn a lot about the real estate negotiation that acquired her final resting place at Kiryat Arba. Some say Abraham particularly wanted this location for the family plot, because he knew it to be the spot where Adam and Eve were entombed!

Filed Under: Torah

Modim anachnu lach
November 22, 2008

By Gardening Grandma

It's the last weekend before Thanksgiving, the first weekend when there's no more pretending that winter's cold and dark days are not just around the corner.

But it was sunny enough today to go out into the garden one last time and take down the tomato plants that froze earlier this week and put the garden to bed. Once the tomato and pepper plants were gone, only one bright green spot remained: the carrots I'd planted so many months ago.

With a deep push from the pitchfork they came to the surface. Bright orange carrots, what seemed like hundreds of them!

Filed Under: Holidays

Reclaiming our profound identity on Shabbat
November 21, 2008 (6 Comments)

by Dr. Carol Ochs, Adjunct Professor of Jewish Religious Thought
Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion - New York
Excerpted from Dr. Ochs' keynote address at the Union's Shabbat Symposium, January 2007
Why keep the Sabbath? Because it is commanded? That really doesn't sit well with Reform Jews. Because it is traditional? Well, then, are we talking about a museum or a living faith? Because it gives us community? That's good, but not good enough.

I think Shabbat is about our relationship to God. We don't know who we are, we don't know who God is, and we are invited to be still and know that I am God. One of the things that has kept the Jewish people from falling into the bitterness of other groups that have been exiled or enslaved or treated badly over 2,000 years is that once a week they say, "I am not what they are calling me. I am a person in relationship to God." They bathe themselves in this identity and it inoculates them against less glorious names.

Filed Under: Shabbat

Because Tomorrow is Shabbat
November 21, 2008

By dcc
Join with me now: (To the tune of "We're Off to See the Wizard")

Today is Yom Shishi, Yom Shishi is day six, Yom Shishi is day six and that's the day we get our kicks, because tomorrow is Shabbat the day we like a lot a lot, a lot a lot a lot a lot a looooot, Because tomorrow is Shabbat (do dot do do do do dot), Today is Yom Shishi, Yom Shishi is day six!!!!!!!

As a child I went to a summer camp in Southern California that was crazy about Israeli Dance, Song Session and Shabbat prep. I spent many a summer in the hills of Brandeis, CA getting sun burned, making good friends and building the framework of my Jewish identity. One of the senior staff members would always introduce the above song as something that someone else would sing on Friday mornings, as we ate breakfast on the dance pavilion so the dinning room could be cleaned for Shabbat. It was camp, so the story would get more and more exciting each time. My guess, by now, the writer of this song was Harold Arlen with lyrics by E.Y. Harburg. (They wrote the original...)

Filed Under: Shabbat

Should we invite conversion?
November 20, 2008 (63 Comments)

By Gardening Grandma
Three years ago Rabbi Eric Yoffie said it was time for Reform Jews to actively encourage conversion. "It is a mitzvah to help a potential Jew become a Jew-by-choice," he told the Biennial assembly.

Debatable Do you agree with Rabbi Yoffie? In the winter edition of Reform Judaism magazine, two Reform rabbis take on the issue. See what Rabbi Stephen Einstein and Rabbi Rosalin Mandelberg, both members of the Joint Commission on Outreach and Membership, have to say.

Filed Under: Community | Jewish Living

What's in a Name?
November 19, 2008 (9 Comments)

by Larry Kaufman
A recent comment on this blog suggested that unscrupulous infiltrators were subversively seeking to transform pristine Reform temples into (gasp) synagogues!

I have blogged before about the ways words change meaning, or acquire niche meanings, or develop connotations not necessarily understood beyond a certain group. However, anyone who tries to co-opt the meaning of a word on behalf of a personal agenda risks being misunderstood or losing credibility.

In choosing to call their synagogues temples, the late-nineteenth and early twentieth century Reformers were trying to make a point. Nervous about accusations of dual loyalty, they wanted to emphasize their lack of aspiration to rebuild a temple in Jerusalem. Did their Christian neighbors get the message? Probably not, but their strategy resonated with their fellow Jews, and today over 500 of the 900-plus congregations in the Union for Reform Judaism use Temple in their names.

Filed Under: Community

Conduct Un-becoming
November 17, 2008 (3 Comments)

By Andi L. Rosenthal
When I was four years old, I learned how to make the Sign of the Cross. As a pre-kindergarten student at the Immaculate Conception School, I was taught that this was a necessary practice to begin and end any conversation we wished to have with God. We were to use this rite any time we needed to talk to God - to give thanks, to pray for help or healing, or even just to ask a question. I remember clearly how the nuns walked up and down the rows of desks, painstakingly correcting each child as they sought to master the choreography of the ritual - the slight touching of the forehead, then the space right below the heart, first left, then right. As a child, it fascinated me that this tiny ceremony was akin to picking up the phone, or in these days, opening up a text window to send an email. Just ask the question, we were taught, and you will receive an answer.

So it was with great interest and excitement that I read Rabbi Jack Bloom's article in the latest edition of Reform Judaism magazine. Perhaps because I learned from a very young age that the signs and wonders of God's creation were all around us, or perhaps because I was taught to share my desk with a guardian angel, I found Rabbi Bloom's article to be not nearly as controversial as some would perceive.

Filed Under: Jewish Living | Torah

Compassion Knows No Borders
November 17, 2008 (13 Comments)

By Rabbi Eric Yoffie
(Originally published in Reform Judaism magazine)
No one can listen to CNN's Lou Dobbs without being struck by the thinly veiled contempt he expresses for the immigrants, legal and illegal, who make their way to America's shores.

Mr. Dobbs seems to think of immigrants as somehow less than human. Like Pat Buchanan, Tom Tancredo, and other anti-immigration ideologues, he speaks of them as if they were parasites who feed off the rest of us while destroying our economy and undermining our national identity.

It is true that we need a better immigration policy than the one we have--one with a more effective method of securing our borders, a system that will give illegal immigrants a way to earn citizenship, and a guest worker program that will provide the human resources our economy requires. But as important as these goals are for the next administration, it is even more important that our new president speak out against the disdain for other human beings that is at the heart of Mr. Dobbs' nativistic populism. Jews know from long experience that such attitudes usually have less to do with legitimate economic self-interest than with a petty, bigoted mindset that undermines American ideals.

Filed Under: By Rabbi Eric Yoffie | Social Action

On Gods and Mortals
November 17, 2008 (11 Comments)

By Larry Kaufman
Rabbi Bloom's provocative view of our relationship with God centers on the God of the Torah, and I respectfully suggest that we 21st century Reform Jews relate to Somebody altogether different.

Taught as we are that we are made b'tzelem Elohim, in the image of God, we are more likely to look in the mirror than in the Torah to develop our picture. I find more truth than poetry in the story of the little boy huddled with his crayons over a sheet of paper, whose mother asks what he is doing. "I'm drawing a picture of God," he replies. "But Sammy," his mother remonstrates, "nobody knows what God looks like." "Of course not," says Sammy. "I'm not done yet."

Filed Under: Jewish Living | Torah

Closed on Shabbat
November 11, 2008 (25 Comments)

By JanetheWriter
A recent post on her blog by Rabbi Phyllis Sommer (aka Ima on (and off) the Bima) reminds me that Baruch College could learn a thing or two from Isaac and Moishe Nava, proprietors of La Casa de Isaac, a Jewish-Mexican restaurant in the suburbs of Chicago that's closed on Shabbat.

This week at Baruch, it's time to register for the spring semester and as is the minhag of the school, students, based on the number of credits earned to date, are assigned a specific timeslot in which to complete their online registration. Although I certainly am not shomer Shabbos in the traditional sense, I do enjoy celebrating Shabbat and the holidays in a liberal sort of way. I was dismayed, therefore, to receive an email notifying me that my online registration appointment is this Friday, November 14 at 8:15 p.m.

Filed Under: Jewish Living | Shabbat

Joyful Judaism in Cheshvan
November 11, 2008 (6 Comments)

By Marge Eiseman
I just realized that I offered to teach "Joyful Judaism", my own sometimes rambling take on why I love being Jewish, during the month that is often called "bitter" (mar Cheshvan). What an interesting irony - the month is called bitter because there are no special holidays. Since it follows the holiday-laden month of Tishrei, I actually greet Cheshvan each year with relief and joy. Finally, Shabbat can rise to take its place again as the crown of the week.

So as I focused my thoughts on what to teach, given the range of possibilities (contemporary Jewish music, the new Mishkan T'fillah prayerbook, the amazing book I'm currently reading, Witnesses to the One: The Spiritual History of the Sh'ma by Rabbi Joseph Meszler, Jewish cooking, Storahtelling, etc.), I kept heading to teach things connected with Shabbat that I love.

Filed Under: Shabbat

Perfectly Broken
November 10, 2008 (3 Comments)

By dcc

We must begin at the end. Each year for the high holidays at my childhood synagogue, Congregation Or Ami in Southern California, the largest torah comes out of the ark with a broken, burnt and perfect breastplate. The intricate design of this half destroyed piece of sacred art adorns the torah before hundreds of worshipers and defiantly provides peace to everyone in the congregation, especially my mother.

About ten years ago, when we were helping to start Congregation Or Ami, my mother traveled to Boston to visit family and stopped by her childhood synagogue. She spoke to the rabbi and told her with great excitement about our new adventure building a sacred community in our little corner of the Valley. We were starting a religious school, youth groups, adult education courses and lively worship opportunities, she explained to the rabbi. The rabbi had a pretty good idea why she came: my mom came to ask for the breastplate, the broken burnt and perfect breastplate, that had adorned Temple Ohabei Shalom's torah for nearly two generations. The rabbi said of course.

On November 10, 1938 my grandfather was forced to shovel the ashes of his childhood synagogue as his neighbors watched. Meppen, Germany was still smoky in the morning after the night of the broken glass. Since the time of the Spanish Inquisition, my grandfather's family lived in this small village in North Western Germany in relative peace with its non-Jewish population. My family ran the dried goods store, was active in the Jewish community and respected the law of the land. But on that night 70 years ago, generations were destroyed by the torches and stones of a mob motivated by a mad man. read MORE

Filed Under: Community | Torah

When Heartland Pigs Fly
November 7, 2008 (5 Comments)

By Dr. Magda Peck
(First posted on the RACblog)

Dr. Magda Peck is a member of the URJ Commission on Social Action and chairs its Task Force on Economic Justice, Women and Families. She is a member of Temple Israel in Omaha, Nebraska where she is a Professor of Pediatrics and Public Health at the University of Nebraska Medical Center. The views expressed below are, of course, her own.

When victory for Barack Obama was called just past 10 last Tuesday night, some remarkable things happened.

In the packed Omaha Hilton ballroom where usual Democrat diehards were outnumbered by fresh faces, shrieks of collective disbelief erupted. Deafening shouts of stunning joy filled room. Older Black women sunk into their seats, sobbing, palms raised high praising G-d. Gay couples openly embraced. Swarms of young folks locked arms and jumped up and down for a long, long time. My younger son David, a freshman at American in DC, called: "Ma! Barack Obama is MY President!" Sobbing and laughing, he kept shouting "I can't believe it! I can't believe it!" From Omaha to the nation's capital and so many places in between: "shock and awe," redefined.

Filed Under: Community | Social Action

Election Reflections
November 6, 2008 (1 Comment)

By JanetheWriter
Yesterday during lunch, Naomi, one of my colleagues, told the following story:

Her father was a poll worker in Wisconsin on Election Day. An elderly African-American woman came in to vote. She was carrying with her a small package. The poll workers asked her what it was and she said, "I brought my ancestors with me." With that, she opened the package and took out pictures of several deceased relatives. The poll workers helped her set them up in the voting booth so they could be with her when she voted.

Naomi said that she's told the story three or four times and gets teary with each telling. She isn't the only one.

* * *

As always happens when I go to vote, I think about my grandparents. My grandfather died in March of 1986 and my grandmother in July of 1991. And, while I observe their yahrzeits at the appropriate season each year, I also think of Election Day as a pseudo-yahrzeit for each of them. In this, their adopted country, they savored the right to step up, to raise their voices, and to have them count. Never did either of them miss a trip to the polls on Election Day. Indeed, it is a most fitting tribute to their memories.

Filed Under: Social Action

"You wouldn't be voting for Obama today if Andy Goodman hadn't gone to Mississippi "
November 5, 2008 (5 Comments)

(First posted on the RACblog)
The following is an e-mail letter from Doug Mishkin to his daughter Arielle and their very close friend Melanie Anenberg. Doug, a lawyer with the Washington Office of Patton Boggs, is a long time activist who developed a close friendship with Carolyn Goodman, mother of slain Civil Rights worker Andrew Goodman.

Arielle and Melanie:

I woke up today thinking of the two of you. In your first election, you'll get to vote for an African-American (if I ever learn that you did otherwise, well, it's a free country and you can do what you want, but don't bother coming home).

I can't resist taking note of this. Your parents wondered whether we would EVER get to do this. How did this happen? Well, it happened for lots of reasons. But you got to touch one of those reasons personally. We sat in Carolyn's house during that vacation (you know, the best Mishkin vacation ever because Melanie was with us) and she told you the story of Goodman, Schwerner and Chaney.

Filed Under: Community | Social Action

President Obama: (Community) Organizer in Chief
November 5, 2008 (5 Comments)

By Rabbi Jonah Pesner
(First posted on the RACblog)
Rabbi Jonah Pesner is the Founding Director of the Union for Reform Judaism's Just Congregations.

Shortly before he began his presidential campaign, Senator Barack Obama sat down for most of an afternoon with Mark Pelavin and me. We were struck at the time by the intensity with which he listened, and by the probing nature of his questions about Just Congregations. We were happily surprised that he had read the materials on our website (not every elected official does their homework for a routine meeting!). The Senator wanted to know not just about our mission and goals, but also about me. He wasn't satisfied with what; he wanted to know why. Why did I believe in the work I was doing?

I believe that Obama's inquisitiveness is directly related to his experience as a community organizer. Among the most critical qualities of an effective organizer is an authentic curiosity about others. When Obama was only twenty-four, he learned in organizing training that to be powerful in public life, a leader needs a strong, vast network of people who will follow him or her. Consequently, he knows that people only follow a leader if he or she understands them; their values, concerns, interests and motivations. (I received my own training as a community organizer from the same group that trained Obama: the Industrial Areas Foundation, founded by the late Saul Alinsky. In fact, Obama and I were both trained by the same organizer, Arnie Graf, who now mentors me in my role as Director of Just Congregations.)

Filed Under: Community | Social Action

Who's On First?
November 5, 2008 (5 Comments)

By Larry Kaufman
Among my meshugassen (which I'll euphemistically translate as idiosyncrasies) is the tendency to "count the house," and to analyze the count. One day I decided to apply my meshugass to this blog. The statistics that follow represent a snapshot in time, but my sues is that doing the same exercise today - or tomorrow - would yield similar results.

How many people do you suppose are involved in the discussion here at www.rj.org - as posters, as commenters, or both? Take a minute to make your own guesstimate, before you proceed to my findings.

Filed Under: Community