Chanukah Stories to Share

In Rabbi London's Chanukah message, she asked us to share with the congregation our favorite Chanukah story (personal or otherwise). Below are some responses:

My favorite story that's suitable for Chanukah (since it's set in a very significant snow scene) is I. B. Singer's "Zlateh the Goat." The story is delightful, with tension and danger that's resolved very happily with a goat and a young boy, and the theme is lovely. It's probably too long for preschoolers, but for grade school kids, it's very nice. I read it to my own kids more than once, and I even read it aloud to my son's public school class when he was in (I think it was) second grade, and I was invited to read "something about Chanukah." Simply put, it's a magical story.

- Janice Weiss

 

 

My favorite story comes from the book "Hershel and the Hanukkah Goblins" by Eric A. Kimmel. In the story, there is a little Jewish town on top of a hill. As a traveler (Hershel) passes through on Hanukkah, he notices that there are no Menorahs out. When he asks the villagers why, they reply that their are goblins who don't like Hanukkah and forbid the lighting of the candles. The only way the villagers can celebrate Hanukkah is if Hershel can convince the Goblin King to light the Menorah candles himself.

When I was too little to read, I was fascinated by the pictures. As I grew, and saw all my friends celebrating Christmas, I learned to appreciate the underlying message of the story; being proud of who you I was and not letting anyone else make me feel differently."

- Margaux 

Building Bridges of Understanding

Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav taught: Kol ha'olam kulo gesher tzer me'od, v'ha'ikar, lo lefached clal. The whole world is a very narrow bridge, and the main thing is not to fear at all.

How many of the decisions we make as individuals, as a community, as a nation, are driven by fear? Fear of speaking out? Fear of taking risks? Fear of that which is foreign? Fear of she or he who looks different from us?

Rabbi Nachman's teaching suggests that, like a narrow bridge, life's precariousness can cause us to act out of fear rather than on the basis of our highest human values. To avoid acting out of fear is not simply an important rule, he says; it is ha-ikar: the guiding principle for us humans to adopt as we cross that bridge. One way we can embrace that principle and live more courageously and fully is by building relationships that cross the racial, ethnic religious, political and cultural divides that are so often sources of fear.

For the year 5773 our annual theme will focus on Building Bridges of Understanding between our community and other communities. These bridges will extent to to our interfaith partners, the greater Jewish community and Israel.

Rabbi Andrea London

The Three Synagogues?

By Larry Kaufman

When I became a member of Beth Emet in 2007, I quickly learned that, most of the time, either Rabbi Knobel or Rabbi London would present the dvar Torah at Kabbalat Shabbat, while, most of the time, a lay member of the Kahal would lead the Shabbat morning Torah discussion. Thus I felt particularly honored, a year and a half into my membership, when Rabbi  Knobel called to ask if I would be willing on such and such a Kabbalat Shabbat to give the dvar Torah.  I said yes, without thinking, and only then did it occur to me to inquire, “What’s the parasha?” It was too late to back out when I learned he had saddled me with Vayikra, the first parasha in the problematic Book of Leviticus.

But in for a penny, in for a pound.  As long as I was going to prepare a drash on Vayikra, I could hardly say no when Leonard Nelson, the Dvar Torah coordinator for Kahal, asked me to do a repeat performance the next morning.  Leonard and I discussed the possibility of people having to hear the same material twice, but concluded that there are relatively few people who attend services both on Friday night and on Saturday morning.   

Similarly, in my short time at Beth Emet, I had observed that many people are regular participants in adult education but infrequent worshippers. And our current Tzedek tzedek tirdof theme puts a spotlight on the large contingent whose most visible activity lies in our manifold works of tikkun olam.  The JUF keeps reminding us that We Are One, but at Beth Emet, we seem to be at least three: a worship congregation, a study congregation, and a social justice congregation. Maybe the sign outside our shul should read Beth Emet – the Three Synagogues. 

Commenting on the variety of ways our activists identify with the congregation is particularly timely when we are reading Leviticus, as we were at the time of my Vayikra dvar, and are again now. In his analysis of the relevance of Leviticus to the modern reader, Professor Robert Alter identifies lehavdil, to divide, to set apart, to draw lines, as the thematic core of the book.  The parasha – in fact the whole book -- dwells on drawing lines among the roles of Aaron and his sons, the Kohanim, the other members of the tribe of Levi, and the Israelite civilian population.  The Reform movement long since dropped the hereditary distinctions among Cohen, Levi, Yisrael, but have we substituted a new tri-partite division, worshippers, studiers, and social activists?  

When we discussed this at Kahal, it turned out that the Cohen-Levi-Yisrael distinction may not be all that absent.  Someone pointed out that it is maintained for aliyot at the Beth Emet minyan.  Teddy Aronson told us she transitioned from her nominally Orthodox upbringing to Beth Emet and Reform when her traditional community refused to accept her status as a Levi.  She was willing to pray where that status was ignored, but not where it was denied. Another Kahalnik, while appreciating the idea of different strokes for different folks, expressed dismay at the idea that we be seen as other than a unified congregation, held together by a shared ethos, even though people follow divergent and often multiple paths in expressing themselves Jewishly.

Yes, some of our members favor one, others another, of the three major mission of any synagogue – Torah, Avodah, G’milut Hasadim – study, worship, good deeds.  All are encapsulated in the “obligations without measure” prayer, that lists the activities that can’t be overdone, but ends, talmud torah k’neged kulam, the study of Torah encompasses them all.  That might suggest that in the triad of study, worship, good deeds, study is paramount.   But I prefer another reading, which satisfies the call by my Kahal colleague that we be seen as a unified congregation, not as the Three Synagogues. 

Torah, Avodah, G’milut Hasadim.  Wherever we place our dominant attention, the bottom line is the idea that those are not three things, they are one!

All Together Now, Out Loud, Four Small Words for Peace

The quest for justice sometimes takes us down unexpected paths to unanticipated places. For some it may be a facility that discriminates invidiously on the basis of age or origin or gender or race or creed. For others, it may be a legislature that refuses to act to redress a perceived wrong.

Then again, sometimes the quest takes us back to a familiar place, a place closer to home where we would least expect to find an inequity, a place like our own prayer book in our own synagogue.

When the issue was one of gender language and imagery, the Reform movement, like the Reconstructionist movement, amended traditional prayer texts to speak with more neutral language, for instance with Sovereign instead of King, Deliverer instead of Savior, Adonai instead of Lord, or with additional more expressly inclusive references, for instance by adding a list of matriarchs to the list of patriarchs in the T’Filah. But, as we sat in community with our brothers and sisters from the Second Baptist Church I realized there is more to be done beyond correcting gender related issues.

The siddur, by virtue of its origins and purpose, is a parochial book. It contains the prayers and poetry of the Jewish people written and collected across continents and time. It is in many ways also an aspirational book, looking to a future. The editors of Mishkan T’Filah, however, missed a good (and rare) opportunity to demonstrate an authentic Jewish concern, and failed to enable our community to reach out and embrace the strangers among us.

One of the most familiar prayers in our liturgy is the Kaddish Yatom, Mourner’s Kaddish. It is a prayer of considerable importance, said standing in our congregation and aloud. Its words say nothing about death or mourning, but speak of praise for the Eternal One. At the end of the prayer, there is a prayer for peace. It is an unusual appeal to “Oseh Shalom Bimromav”, that is, “the One who creates harmony on high.” We ask for peace for “us and all Israel.” I wondered during that service a few weeks ago what I would think if I were a member of Second Baptist Church and read those words. “What about me?” I imagined they were thinking. “I could use some of that peace too.” Indeed.

What make this restriction particularly curious and onerous is that this prayer for peace is found elsewhere in the siddur, at the end of the T’Filah, but each time other than in the Kaddish the prayer has been modified with the words “v’al kol yosh’vei teiveil” or “and all who inhabit the earth.” So, the editors knew a way to express an inclusive wish for peace for all humanity, and did so numerous times in the prayer book, but, however well intentioned, failed to do so at the end of the Kaddish.

I am less interested in analyzing why the editors made the choice they made than in urging we complete the task they have begun. A community bold enough to recognize how problematic certain gender language was for 50% of the population issues should be at least as sensitive to the 99.8% of the population left out of a prayer for peace. And there are such communities. Reform, Reconstructionist and unaffiliated congregations across this country and in Israel have added “v’al kol yosh’vei teiveil” to their recitation of the Kaddish. They have done so because they recognize that Torah teaches loving the stranger just as it teaches loving your neighbor. And they recognize, as Rabbi Melanie Aron has said, “There will be no peace for the Jewish people, where there is no peace for others as well.”

Beth Emet is strong enough, wise enough and good enough to join them. And it should. So, as a community, let’s add four small words, out loud, and prominently. Who knows? Maybe this is what the Mashiach has been waiting for?

Roger Price

Celebrating MLK, Interfaith Writings and a Flash Mob in Jerusalem

If you were at Beth Emet on Friday, January 13 for the Martin Luther King Shabbas dinner and conversation, you know that you were at a history-celebrating and history-making event. But if you couldn't be there, you can get a small taste of that night from text and links below.


I had the pleasure of contributing a personal story connecting King, to my father, to the civil rights movement, to the North Shore, and back to Beth Emet. Here is the text of that piece and the link to the radio interview that followed on Monday, January 16.  EBB

In 1958, 29-year-old Martin Luther King, Jr was a guest speaker at Beth Emet synagogue in Evanston. Admission was $1.75. The program says King was considered “one of the outstanding Negro leaders in the country.”

Five years later, in 1963, King delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech at the March on Washington, rhetoric that set the tone for the civil rights movement and ultimately earned him a Nobel Peace Prize.

…. A hundred years after the Emancipation Proclamation and the Negro is still not free.. 

Rabbi Andrea London and Reverend Mark Dennis at the WBEZ Studios 

That same year, my parents moved to Glencoe. In nearby Deerfield, town leaders were threatening to keep an integrated apartment building from being built by turning the area into a park. Eminent domain, they said. My father, a white, Jewish businessman, had been moved by King’s mission to end racial segregation and discrimination. So he went to the rally in that park to protest and brought me along. I was almost four.

What happened there has stayed with me since: I can still see the huge crowd forming a large circle. I can still feel my father’s hand in mine and see the smile from a tall, black man as he took my other hand. And I will always hear that chorus of men’s, women’s and children’s voices singing “We shall overcome, we shall overcome, we shall overcome, someday…” 

….We need to lift our nation from the quicksand of racial injustice…

Later that year, my dad, who at 29 had become active in the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) was arrested at a demonstration at the Chicago Board of Education office. CORE was demanding the resignation of the superintendent who was authorizing the building of new schools in white neighborhoods but not black ones. My father and 36 others were arrested and jailed at this nonviolent sit-in. A photograph of my father being dragged off by police made the cover of the Chicago Daily News.

Race relations in the 1960s was less about talk and more about demonstrations…. rallies … sit-ins … jail time or violence. The worst of course was in 1968, when Martin Luther King was shot on the second floor balcony of a Memphis motel.

A few years ago, a recording of King’s synagogue speech was found in a congregant’s basement. Beth Emet’s Rabbi Andrea London asked Second Baptist Pastor Mark Dennis to co-host a Friday evening sabbath service on Martin Luther King’s birthday. Evanston Jews and Baptists prayed and sang together. Portions of King’s 1958 speech were played, followed by dinner and a table discussion between the congregations about the challenges and next steps for race relations in the community.

Today, Martin Luther King would have turned 83 years old.

Would he be disappointed that we are still talking about race relations? Or would he be pleased at how different it looks?

“I have a dream that the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will sit down at the table of brotherhood. I have a dream.” 

I have no way of knowing if the sons and daughters of former slaves and slave owners were in that room last Friday evening, but I do know that some fifty years after King first spoke about racial equality in this same community, his dream for blacks and whites to sit down at the table of brotherhood became a reality.

Ellen Blum Barish

In other news....


Several Beth Emet women - Marilyn Price, Betsy Fuchs and myself -  are featured in the launch of an online interfaith publication titled Creative Space, produced by the women of SoulSpace, a women's interfaith circle that celebrated 10 years in 2011.


Marilyn Gehant, founding mother of SoulSpace, writes, 


"We invite you to enter Creative Space and share the spiritual writing and images of our Jewish, Christian and Muslim contributors. The seeking spirit of women of faith is at work in our inaugural posting of Creative Space.  On the way to a wedding, in sacred spaces, through home ritual, women pray and make meaning of life’s gifts and challenges.  In the stillness of the woods and in the coolness of a swimming pool, they listen more deeply.  To earthquake shattered Pakistan and the holy places of Israel, they journey to form relationships in faith.  Waiting on the tarmac or sitting near a hospital bed or stirring a cup of coffee, women form images and expressions of souls searching the many manifestations of Adonai, God, Allah.  


Here's the link to read more:

http://soulspacecreative.blogspot.com/

And finally, because my daughter is en route back to college today from her first trip to Israel, I couldn't resist posting a link to this
wonderful Youtube video: a flash mob in Jerusalem. 
Enjoy.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzhQuQGyulA&feature=share

Know Us by Our Names – and by Our Deeds

I have had a long-time fascination with synagogue names, how they came to be adopted, and how the name of the congregation and the values it reflects “play out” in the life of the congregation, if at all.  (I blogged about this three years ago on the Reform Judaism blog, at http://blogs.rj.org/blog/2009/01/26/god_and_man_at_shul/).  

Here at Beth Emet, our founding story remains familiar and our founding principles are embedded in our congregational culture, where all are free to express the truth (emet) as they see it.  And the story is memorialized on our website www.bethemet.org, so that any visitor can know what we stand for and how we came to be in the place where we are.

But it must be said that openness to truth and freedom of speech are both relatively passive, the terrain across which our journey takes place.  The Beth Emet journey, over these sixty-plus years, has been one of action, and our action theme for the current year is tzedek, tzedek tirdof, justice, justice you shall pursue.  This theme provides us with programmatic focus, putting an even greater emphasis on what has long been integral to our congregational DNA. 

The instruction to pursue justice comes out of Parashat Shoftim, but the parasha also reminds us of other values, including rachamim, mercy, shalom, peace, emet, truth, and ometz, courage.  Hopefully these too are part of our genetic makeup. 

Fusing our Beth Emet stress on tzedek with my personal interest in what temples call themselves, I decided to take a specific look at congregations that incorporate tzedek in their names.  Given the distinct emphasis Reform Judaism has historically given to social justice, one would expect to find more than half a dozen on our roster of 900 congregations.  But that’s all there are.  (This compares, on the one hand, with 16 Reform “emet” congregations, and with 14 Conservative “tzedek” congregations.)

So what do the tzedek congregations of the Reform movement do about pursuing justice, and about featuring its pursuit?  Although all have active social action programs, with mitzvah days and interfaith programming and soup kitchens among their activities, only one of the six provides visible attention to its commitment to justice. 

B’nai Tzedek, in Fountain Valley, CA, reminds its congregants and its visitors every time they enter the sanctuary of where they are.  On the right side of their bimah wall are the words "Tzedek, Tzedek Tirdof" – “Justice, Justice Shall You Pursue.” On the left side of the bimah wall are the words "Marbeh Tzedakah Marbeh Shalom" – “The More Justice, the More Peace.”  Their website goes on to explain “Congregation B'nai Tzedek is committed to pursuing justice in synagogue life as well as in society at large. B'nai Tzedek means ‘Children of Justice.’"

We read in Tanchuma Vayakkhel:  Every man has three names: one by which his parents call him; another, by which he is known to the outside world; and a third, the most important, the name which his own deeds have procured for him. 

 

As it with people, so too it should be for synagogues:  they should be known not only by their names but by their deeds.  Our congregational names need to be more than identifiers – they need to be a starting point for our identities.  We read in Pirke Avot 1:18, The world stands on three things – on truth, on justice,* and on peace.  Much as I hope that every congregation lives up to the value its institutional parents inscribed in its name, and hopefully stresses it in some manner, no single one of our core values can be the only thing we do.   

*Full disclosure:  The Hebrew here is din, not tzedek, emphasizing law without the overtone of compassion inherent in tzedek.

Larry Kaufman

 

Talmudic Lessons for the Wanna-Be's

I was lucky enough to be in Boston recently on the day Elie Wiesel gave the second of his three annual lectures at Boston University, and I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to attend (especially since he was introduced by Deanna Klepper, chair of the BU Department of Religion and wife of Beth Emet’s former cantor, the renowned Jeff Klepper.)

Prof. Wiesel’s subject was Eliezer ben Hyrcanus—Eliezer the Great, one of the rabbis whose insights are found in the Talmud and well-documented in Pirke Avot, in which Rabbi Yochanon ben Zakkai essentially describes Rabbi Eliezer as smarter (or does he mean more worthy?) than his four other disciples put together. 

Yet Rabbi Eliezer was excommunicated following a dispute in which he steadfastly disagreed with the other sages--a strange situation for the same avot who set such store by the values of study, discussion, dissention, debate and interpretation. 

I have little doubt that Prof. Wiesel was actually making a crucial statement about what is happening too often in our political discourse here in the United States. And it should serve as a lesson to our leaders as they return to Washington for more Congressional shenannigans—as well as to us and our wanna-be leaders as we head into election season.

Legend has it that the debate that caused Rabbi Eliezer such trouble was over whether a certain oven was ritually pure. The oven was a special type, built in a certain way. Rabbi Eliezer argued rationally that it was pure, while all the others argued it was impure. Despite Torah’s requirements to comply with the rule of the majority, Rabbi Eliezer remained firm. When his rational arguments failed to convince them, Rabbi Eliezer turned to the supernatural. If this oven is pure, may this carob tree prove it, he said. And the tree was torn out by its roots and blown away. Still, his colleagues were unconvinced. May this stream of water prove it, he tried. And the stream flowed backward. With the others still unimpressed, he called on the walls of the building to prove his point, and they began to topple. But the other sages shamed the walls for interfering in an issue of law, and they ceased falling. Finally, Rabbi Eliezer called upon Heaven to verify his interpretation, and Heaven scolded the others for disagreeing with Rabbi Eliezer.

The sages, however, invoked the laws of Torah as the operative authority over “the celestial intruder” and, out of Rabbi Eliezer’s presence, declared all his earlier legal opinions regarding purification matters invalid, and then excommunicated him.

“Isn’t the Talmud based on dialogue?” Prof. Wiesel asked. “Isn’t that which makes it so glorious, transcending time and frontier and fashion? Which means, isn’t the Talmud a celebration of the right to be different? To demonstrate the beauty of discussion and dissention? Why then should the great Rabbi Eliezer be punished and ostracized… and ultimately expelled from the academy? Only because he believed in it and he had the courage to say in what he believed?...His voice is personal, solitary—so what?  Is it so bad to be a minority of one?”

His conclusion is that Rabbi Eliezer’s mistake “was to call upon heaven rather than on logic…Talmudic debates, as all debates, are, and must be, rational, logical. They must take place at the human level. Once you introduce the supernatural element, it dominates the discussion and in effect, eliminates the participants. Such an attitude is dangerous…They were angry not with his views, although they disagreed with them, but with his methods.” 

And those methods involved God’s opinion in a case that rested on points of law. “They were not arguing about mysticism, or poetry…” Prof. Wiesel said both sides should have argued legal issues. Rabbi Eliezer, he said, “should have reasoned with them, drawing on his knowledge and experience. He should have used filibuster tactics to prevail upon them…(seeking) evidence from different sources, formulating new interpretations” to convince his friends, rather than relying on supernatural and divine judgments.  

“The sages,” Prof. Wiesel noted, “sought to avoid conflicts, disputes, fragmentation. They were not against minority views, nor were they against different opinions. They were against fanatic opinions. And none is as fanatic as the one that claims to derive from heaven. Such attitudes inevitably provoke splits. And in those critical times, with the Temple ruins still in everyone’s memory, the Jewish people needed unity of purpose and an awareness of man’s duty and power in order to be able, literally to be able, to dream of the new glory and sovereignty.” 

Substitute a few words in that paragraph, like “World Trade Center” for Temple, and “American” for Jewish, and you have a contemporary lesson. Concluded Prof. Wiesel, “Had Rabbi Eliezer used his human qualities…he would have remained their friend and their teacher...”

Can someone please pass along his lesson to our Congress and the wanna-be’s?

Janet Reed