Reform Judaism

VaYetsei -- Did Someone Edit Your Torah?
December 4, 2008

By Marge Eiseman
I have been dwelling in Parashat VaYetsei this week, in preparation for leading a D'var Torah at the Harry & Rose Samson JCC in Milwaukee on Wednesday night. I read through it, line by line, and when I got to the end, I realized that by now, with years of Torah study under my belt, I had already read and "knew" every single part of the story.

I knew about Jacob leaving Beer-Sheva traveling towards Harran, and resting for the night in the certain place -- HaMakom. I knew he put his head on a stone pillow and dreamt the dream of angels ascending and descending a ladder to heaven. I remembered the promise that God made to him in that dream, and what he said on awakening.

Filed Under: Torah

Sharing the Gift of Shabbat
December 4, 2008

by Rabbi Rachel Gurevitz Ph.D.
Congregation B'nai Israel, Bridgeport, CA
Excerpted from Dr. Gurevitz's keynote address at the Union's Shabbat Symposium, January 2007
I have realized that there are a number of things that I bring to my work or the things that I hope to do in my work as a rabbi that have been in direct response to negative experiences that I had as a lay member of a community sometime in the past. And Shabbat is actually one of those things.

I want to start off with a little bit of that lay experience: Back in 1996, I was a member of a Reform synagogue in London. I wrote a two-sided proposal that I sent to both rabbis. It was called Yom Shabbat. And what I was highlighting was that I was conscious as a young adult, single, that congregants would come to services--in the UK, more Reform congregants do come for a community service on Shabbat morning, and that is partly because we have a different history. The bar/bat mitzvah never sort of took over the service in the same way that it has done here.

But we would come to services and then that would be it and people would go their separate ways. Nothing else happened at the synagogue, and I had no idea whether or not other people did Shabbat things, whether the rabbis did Shabbat-related things--I had no idea. I just knew that I was basically by myself.

Filed Under: Community | Shabbat

When the Yizkor list gets long...
November 30, 2008 (1 Comment)

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 (2 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 | Religious Life

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 (5 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: Ethics

Now playing at your local synaplex. Cineplex?
November 24, 2008 (2 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 (5 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