Several months ago, I received a panicked email from our contact at the International Medical Corps, one of the URJ's grant recipients from our Haiti Relief Fund. The URJ, along with the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), had funded a clinic in the underserved coastal region around Petit Goave, west of Port-au-Prince, as well as a mobile clinic - a boat - that provided medical services to nearby coastal villages that have been inaccessible since the earthquake. As the hurricane season approached and the seas became rougher, their boat was no longer sea-worthy. They had a lead on a used boat that could serve their purpose, but only if they acted quickly. The cost was $12,000. "Buy the boat!" I said. We already had authorization from our allocations committee for this project and ample funds remained within the designated allocation. Two days later, just as I was heading to Shabbat services, I received another urgent message - the used boat would not work out, but they found a new boat that could serve their needs. The cost was a bit more -- $19,000. Could they purchase the boat? "Buy the boat!" I said again in my final text before turning off my PDA for Shabbat.

I was recently asked by someone I very much respect to address "the" question. So I started to write the answer in a post...about five times without any luck. The "Why does a 20-something join a Reform Congregation" question. I have no kids and am Jewishly connected in my life, so why join a congregation?  Some may say it is a legitimate question. I say you are missing the point of congregational life.

The myth that young Reform Jews are not joining a temple because they don't find it useful or meaningful is bunk. The real issue is that Reform Jews as a whole aren't joining congregations because they don't find something useful or meaningful within membership. In many communities within our Movement, synagogues have become bar and bat mitzvah factories. We are, in fact, in great danger of becoming what our more conservative and closed-minded co-religionists call "Judaism Lite."  If we challenge our communities to learn, grow and take responsibility, my bet is we will see some more folks filling the seats on Shabbat.  

I originally joined Temple Shaaray Tefila in New York City for three reasons. 1) I needed a place for the High Holy Days and my sister couldn't get me into Hillel services at Columbia anymore.  2) The location is three blocks from my apartment. 3) The congregation values young people making a commitment to the community so much that they set membership costs for people in their 20s at only $18 a year. (For a few years...)

But that isn't why I stayed. 

Ah, the memories! The smells, the food, the cookies, the craft projects, the family decorating together, the company coming over to celebrate, the smell of freshly cut tree branches while building the sukkah!

Wait. Did you say 'building the sukkah?' Weren't we talking about Christmas?

When adults share childhood holiday memories, the stories are similar regardless of which holidays they are recalling. The warm memories are about time: Time spent with family members, time spent making meals or cookies, time spent sharing a family meal.

Sukkot offers Jewish families an opportunity to create all of the warm family memories that are often associated with Christmas, Easter and other family holidays.

Consider the following ways to create great Sukkot memories:

For more info, see Hurricane Katrina and New Orleans 5 Years Later

With the five year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina upon us, so many memories from that time have come flooding back - and I know all of you who were close to that experience are also taking time to reflect.

I continue to be tremendously proud of the work that Jacobs Camp did. We were really out there making a difference in a time of tremendous need. We were blessed by the opportunity to provide shelter for more than 250 people in the days and weeks following the storm, and doubly-blessed by the opportunity to launch the Jacobs' Ladder Relief Project that brought 4 Million pounds of relief supplies, and hundreds of volunteers into the region - and helped shine the spotlight of the Reform Movement and the organized Jewish community on the Gulf Coast Region.

We felt the storm's wrath in other ways, too.

So many of our camp families experienced tremendous losses -- and some of them are still recovering. Thanks to the Foundation for Jewish Camp, the Habayita Fund was set up to help kids return to Jacobs in the summers of 2006 and 2007; but, between the families who took major financial hits, and the others who found relocating the only way to move forward, our camper registration took a hit. Our registration has recovered -- this summer we served the most campers we ever have &mdash but who knows when our New Orleans numbers will rebound to pre-Katrina levels.

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...Zebulun did not dispossess the inhabitants of Kitron or the inhabitants of Nahalol; so the Canaanites dwelt in their midst, but they were subjected to forced labor. Asher did not dispossess the inhabitants of Acco or the inhabitants of Sidon, Ahlab, Achzib, Helbah, Aphik, and Rehob. So the Asherites dwelt in the midst of the Canaanites, the inhabitants of the land, for they did not dispossess them...
        -Judges 1:30-32

Prague:  We're not really into goulash, dumplings, and beer, but the feast for our other senses was satiating: cathedrals and synagogues, castles and bridges, monuments and art exhibits; you get a stiff neck walking around looking up at all the amazing buildings.  To a layman, keeping track of all those dynasties and their machinations - and trying to keep straight all the different architectural styles in their chronology - can be quite daunting.

There is a story told by Winston Lord of a speech he wrote for Henry Kissinger. "[Kissinger] called me in the next day and said, 'Is this the best you can do?' . . . this went on eight times, eight drafts; each time he said, 'Is this the best you can do?' So I went in there with a ninth draft, and when he . . . asked me that same question . . . I said, 'Henry, I've beaten my brains out . . . I know it's the best I can do. . . ..' He then looked at me and said, '. . .  now I'll read it.'" ¹

Doing one's best has come to be a cop out: something we might say, mealy-mouthed, to avoid improving ourselves. But as this story illustrates, it's actually a challenge--to commit one's faculties and abilities fully to the task at hand.

But what happens when our best isn't enough? At some point, we will say the wrong or hurtful word, we will duck our responsibility to others, we will be overwhelmed by the task before us. What then?

All the Jewish endings come together every year. Here we are at the last Shabbat of 5770. We are almost at the end of the Torah, with just five chapters left to go. The old year is coming to an end. In just a few days, we will come into the synagogue for Rosh Hashanah seeking guidance and direction as we embark on a new year. If, as I proposed when I began writing these passages on Deuteronomy months ago, the Torah is our GPS for life, where is this week's portion taking us? How many options are we given for this last leg of our journey?

The answer in Deuteronomy 30:11-14 is that we do not have to travel by plane or spacecraft, nor do we need to book a cruise. The blueprint for a new year is closer than we think:

Surely, this Instruction [mitzvah] which I enjoin upon you this day is not too baffling for you, nor is it beyond your reach. It is not in the heavens, that you should say, "Who among us can go up to the heavens and get it for us and impart it to us, that we may observe it?" Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, "Who among us can cross to the other side of the sea and get if for us and impart it to us, that we may observe it?" No, the thing is very close to you, in your mouth and in your heart, to observe it.

I love that phrase, "the thing is very close to you."But, I ask myself, "What does it mean for something to be close to us?"

The recent wedding of Chelsea Clinton and Marc Mezvinsky has triggered a spate of articles about interfaith marriage, rabbinic officiation, co-officiation with Christian clergy and the like. Considerably less attention has been focused on the fact that the wedding took place on a Saturday before nightfall. Perhaps this was deemed less newsworthy because it has become so commonplace. I'm asking myself whether the most publicized Shabbat wedding in American Jewish history might have the unintended consequence of questioning anew the propriety of performing weddings on the Sabbath.

The need for Shabbat is greater now than ever before. Folks from widely divergent population segments are beginning to reclaim the Sabbath in a variety of ways. There are the hundreds of secular Israelis gathering at the Tel Aviv port to welcome Shabbat with prayer, poetry and song. There are the innovative hipsters of the Shabbat Manifesto declaring a "national day of unplugging," inspiring thousands of individuals to "put down their cell phones, stop their status updates on Facebook, shut down Twitter, sign out of e-mail and relax." A best-selling book on the Sabbath was published this past spring that prompted several stories in The New York Times about the reconsideration of the Sabbath. Families are looking for ways to connect with each other, and to re-institute the family dinner at least once each week. The time is ripe for us to be more strident in our embrace of Shabbat, particularly in the public domain.

In addition, our increasing environmental awareness reminds us of our own place in the larger universe. Deciding to officiate at Saturday weddings after 6 p.m. is not only arbitrary but represents a kind of environmental hubris in which human beings think that they have the power to make the stars appear earlier. With all of our human knowledge and advancement, we still cannot cause the sun to set. We experience awe of the cosmos when we make ourselves subject to time that lies beyond our control.

How does one receive the Torah? Not in a mystical, Standing-at-Sinai sense or even in an educational sense. In a physical sense: What is a Jew to do when the Torah scroll is in physical proximity?

This topic was raised recently by Larry Kaufman's post, "Going Round in Circles," and it arises frequently on Shabbat mornings. During the hakafah [procession circling the congregation before and/or after the reading], some worshippers in our congregation actively approach the scroll to touch it, and some visibly draw back. On the bima, some participants comfortably handle the sefer Torah [the scroll], while some cringe through awkward moments of access. Our temple's Hebrew poetry group recently discussed, in the context of a Yehuda Amichai poem about childhood synagogue experiences, the concept of the scroll being "dressed" and "naked."

I recalled one week when a young person -- in the regular bar/bat mitzvah pre-reading hakafah -- held the scroll at a strange angle, so the cover was dangling off, leaving the parchment exposed. My seat was at the end of the procession, so I had to watch as a "naked" scroll was carried through the congregation before I could reach out to tuck in the cover and then touch the "dressed" scroll with my tzitzit [fringe of the prayer shawl].

We say, chant, and sing most prayers in Hebrew in my Reform Jewish congregation in suburban Boston. And during High Holy Days, as a member of my temple chorus, I sing two overstuffed binders of prayers almost exclusively in Hebrew. Sometimes, it gives me a headache to sort out the meaning of prayers. And yet, I don't really wish for anything else. Judaism has a gift - that the world over, Jews pray in the same language.

My temple chorus began rehearsals this week for High Holy day services. I relaxed as we sang Avinu Malkenu, so well known to me that the words flow easily from my tongue. I tensed when we started working on Sh'ma Koleynu, the opening anthem for Erev Rosh Hashanah. I knew neither the tune nor the words. I gave myself a challenge: By the time High Holy Days starts, I want to understand this particular prayer.

I will learn to treasure it. I do not want to sing this opening piece hidden behind my chorus binder. Nor do I want to sing the prayer as if it were just words and notes on paper. Experience what could be a majestic beginning to the Days of Awe. That is my goal - and challenge.

At rehearsal, our chorus stumbled some as we first sight-read a version of Sh'ma Koleynu written by an unknown composer. The piece called for singing with movement and energy. We sang it slowly and unsurely at first. Then our cantor at Temple Isaiah in Lexington, Mass., sang it. Even with a cold hampering her, she sang soulfully. We tried again as a chorus, and our second attempt was more melodic. And yet, I still felt wooden as I sang. I knew the words, "Sh'ma Koleynu," meant "Hear our voices." But that was about all I understood.

A current discussion on the Union's worship listserv started with a simple question about Reform practice vis-a-vis hakafa-- marching around the sanctuary with the Torah before reading from it. Practice of course varies from Reform congregation to Reform congregation (and perhaps in some congregations between Shabbat and the High Holy Days). But perhaps a clear-cut clue to the acceptance of the Torah processional in today's Reform is that it is seemingly taken for granted at what is probably the best-attended Reform service anywhere in the Movement, including High Holy Day services -- Shabbat morning at the Biennial. (Remember the on-line furor last year when the officiating rabbi suggested the assembly sit for the Shma?)

I started attending Biennials in the early eighties, but didn't become conscious of the hakafa until I became a Torah carrier as a regional president in the early nineties. This is not to say it wasn't happening earlier, only that its presence or absence would probably not have registered.

At my current congregation, hakafa was already a given when I became a member there three years ago. At my previous congregation, I was involved perhaps twenty-five years ago in making it minhag hamakom, the custom of the place. Hakafa had already become part of the routine at the monthly Family Service -- apparently at the urging of the assistant rabbis and the religious school principal. I got a call one day from the senior rabbi -- I was one of the people he routinely consulted when he was "taking the temperature" of the congregation -- who said "the guys" (his affectionate term for his younger colleagues) were pushing to extend the minhag to every Shabbat, and what did I think.

Indeed, understanding is a central theme of Ki Tavo. Moses assembles the Israelites and, pointing out the great miracles they have experienced, he says: "Yet to this day the Eternal has not given you a mind to understand or eyes to see or ears to hear" (Deuteronomy 29:3).

Why? Why, only many years later could the Israelites understand all they had previously witnessed and experienced?

In a poem called, "Miracles," Yehuda Amichai explains:

From far away, everything looks like a miracle,
But up close, even a miracle doesn't look like one.
Even a crosser of the divided Red Sea
Saw only the sweating back of the walker in front of him
And the movement of his large thighs . . . 
(Modern Poetry in Translation, New Series, no. 4,  winter 1993-94)

Often, we are just too caught up in the demands of the hour to perceive the miracle of which we are a part. Only later does understanding dawn and we realize that, in the words of our patriarch Jacob, "Truly, the Eternal is in this place, and I did not know it" (Genesis 28:16).

With my mother's death earlier this summer, I've become my family's "Keeper of the Yahrzeit List." So, while some of my friends may be having a summer to remember, I seem to be having a summer of remembering.

First it was Grandma, my mother's mother, whose yahrzeit falls on July 25th. She's in my heart always, and in my writing frequently. You can read some of my reminiscences and reflections about her here and here and here.

Next was Uncle Irv's yahrzeit on August 7th. He too has been the subject of my musings.

Tonight is Tante Mina's yahrzeit. My sister Amy is named for her -- Leah Meryl -- but I didn't know anything more, so I asked Aunt Claire, my mother's sister. Here's what she had to say:

Tante Mina was a cousin. I don't know how she was related. She was a very short lady and we always used to measure our height against hers. At a very young age we found ourselves taller than her. To know her was to love her because she was so sweet and kind. She was widowed at an early age. I never knew her husband. She was rather poor, and as she got older she arranged to go to a Jewish home for the aged. She was very happy there; she loved the arts and crafts classes and also volunteered to feed those people in the home who were unable to feed themselves. She was a "gutte neshumah," a good soul. We try to remember her because there is no one else to do so.

And so it is that earlier tonight I lit a yahrzeit candle (that's it up there on the right) for Tante Mina. As I think about her on her yahrzeit, may her memory -- like those of so many others -- be a blessing.

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It was forbidden to allow the posthumous destruction of Man, God, and - this even for the most secularist of Jews - that hope without which a Jew cannot live, the hope which is the gift of Judaism to all humanity. To deny Hitler the posthumous victory of destroying this faith was a moral-religious commandment. I no longer hesitated to call it the 614th commandment.

-Emil Fackenheim, To Mend the World (preface)

It was supposed to be simply a vacation, fairly last minute: we really didn't have the time or budget to plan a vacation this summer, so we found four days between obligations, added up our frequent flier miles, and booked a trip to Prague. We were looking for "escape," without email or cell phones, a different climate, different culture, pleasures of the senses. We had resigned ourselves to being surrounded by Israelis, as Prague is a hugely popular destination for 3- and 4-day packages from Israel. But apparently we were the last Israelis who hadn't been there, as we heard almost no Hebrew. And indeed, Prague is a breathtakingly beautiful city, where we walked our feet off, tried to keep straight the fascinating history, attended concerts, marveled at the architecture, shopped for souvenirs, managed to find decent food, and had a lovely time.