Author: Melissa

Shabbat Shalom!  As we head into the High Holydays, I would love to suggest that you take the year to add Torah study to your weekly routine.  There are many opportunities online to study that take only a few moments, but will certainly keep you thinking for the rest of the week.  Many of these online opportunities also will send you emails about upcoming holidays.  For example, the below from Torah Topics for Today seemed appropriate for the weekend.

AN OPPORTUNITY FOR PERSONAL GROWTH….

ROSH HASHANAH

Rosh Hashanah is perceived as the Jewish New Year, but it is so much more than that. It is time to reflect on the quality of relationships with friends and family and compare yourself to the way you were a year ago. Rosh Hashanah, according to the tradition, gives you a time to make amends to family and friends.

Use the days leading up to Rosh Hashanah to go through a process of introspection and evaluation with your family, thinking and talking about habitual problems and conflicts that are difficult to change. Seeing other family members, regardless of age, struggle with their problems provides children with a measure of comfort and a dose of reality.

Give your children specific examples to think about as they make their own moral inventory of transgressions. Maybe they didn’t treat a sibling well or didn’t share. Perhaps they lied to a friend or didn’t act with respect toward an elder.

TALK TO YOUR KIDS ABOUT how they could improve in their relationships.

CONNECT TO THEIR LIVES:

• Could you be nicer to your brother or sister?
• Could you be a better member of your classroom?
• Do you treat your friends the way you would like to be treated?
• Do you act respectfully to your parents and grandparents?
• How does it feel to tell someone you are sorry for the way you may have treated him/her?

By Rabbi Dianne Cohler-Esses

You can also subscribe to:

My Jewish Learning to receive: Weekly Torah Portion Summaries, Text Studies, Commentaries etc…

URJ for 10 Minutes of Torah offers a daily email on the topics of:

• Reform Voices of Torah – commentary on the weekly portion
• The Rhythum of Jewish Time
• Isarel connections
• Delving Into t’filah – discussions of the New prayer book
• Reform Judaism Q&A

Sign up for one, two or all.

Midrash Manicures

And many more.

Don’t forget that if you want to study Torah, you can also join Rabbi Holtz on Wednesdays from 10-11 am (beginning again in October) and feel free to join us on Saturday mornings at 9 am for our Conservative Service and Torah discussion.

Barry, Tamir and I want to wish you a happy and healthy New Year filled with the study of Torah.

L’shalom,
Cantor Margot

Renewal.  That’s one way to think about the High Holy Days.  The world is renewed; our spirits are renewed; we have a chance to ask forgiveness and renew our relationships.  And, of course, this year we will have a renewed worship space.  The pieces are coming together, and it is going to be beautiful.

It has taken more time than we expected to make it all happen.  Surprisingly, that is also true of personal renewal – it takes longer than we think.  As I’ve said many times, if you show up on Rosh Hashanah without having done any spiritual preparation, you’re bound to be disappointed in the result.

Tomorrow night the Holy Day season officially begins with Selichot (related to the Hebrew word “s’licha – excuse me”), a program and service created specifically to get our spiritual and repenting juices flowing.  We’ve got something for every age group.  You’ll find specific information elsewhere in this e-mail.  I encourage you to begin your High Holy Days tomorrow night.  That will help ensure that your personal spiritual renovation is completed on time!

9 Days.

That is what remains between reading this post, and the start of another year of Religious School. Just a few weeks ago when were at a luxurious 44 days, I urged you all to see the midpoint of the summer as a call to action. A reminder to get those lists of “Things I’m going to accomplish this Summer,” accomplished.

But we are way past the midpoint folks. We are at the bitter end of what may or have not seemed like a long summer to you. But make no mistake, the fat lady has sung and it is OVER.

So with the few precious days you have left I am going to remind you to consciously, intentionally, deliberately take in those last few wisps of summer. Breathe in the sunshine. Take mental snapshots – or real ones – of your beautiful garden or the green grass. Go indulge in the tastes of summer – get a double scoop ice-cream cone and lick up every sticky drop. Lay on a hammock, a park bench, or a beach blanket and look up at the sky. Allow yourself one more lazy afternoon filled with the sweetness of doing nothing.

And then find your own way – privately or with a family member or friend – to bless the moment. This can be the words of blessings you know like the Shehechyanu or words made up entirely of your own heart. Judaism has a long tradition of marking important moments in our lives. We not only mark special occasions, but each week we mark the moment of transition from Shabbat and its holiness, to the rest of the regular week .  The transition from summer to fall, from no school to school, from relaxed to hectic, is certainly an occasion worth marking in some concrete way. Take 60 seconds and make up your very own prayer to do so.

I hope you spend the next 9 days relishing in the last bits of summer!

Pamela Barkley, Director of Education

Shabbat Shalom!  According to my favorite Jewish website, myjewishlearning.com, Elul is the month of preparation and shofar blowing.  What is it that we should do in preparation for the High Holydays?  Jewish tradition points to the name of the month as symbolically appropriate–the letters of Elul form an acronym for the words in the verse Ani le‑dodi ve‑dodi li–“I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine” (Song of Songs 6:3). Believing that the “beloved” refers to God, the sages take this verse to describe the particularly loving and close relationship between God and Israel. Elul, then, is our time to establish this closeness so that we can approach the Yamim Noraim, or Days of Awe, in trusting acceptance of God’s judgment. We approach the trial not out of fear, but out of love.

For the Sephardic  community, this process started last Saturday evening as we began the month of Elul.  For the Ashkenazi community, to which most of us affiliate ourselves, this process of Selichot begins at the end of Shabbat preceding Rosh Hashanah.  Since this process shouldn’t be rushed, there is a ruling that there should be a minimum of 4 days between Shabbat and Rosh Hashanah. This year is one of those rare years when the rule must be applied so please join us for our Selichot program and service on September 8 (programs for all ages start at 6:30pm, service is at 7:30pm).

During Elul, it is customary to blow the shofar each day as a rallying cry towards repentance and self-reflection.  Its echoes are meant to move us toward inscription in the Book of Life.  Last year, we began the custom of sounding the shofar during the month of Elul as we prepare for Shabbat, after our opening songs and before L’cha Dodi, when we usher in the Sabbath bride.  Please join us this Shabbat to hear one of our amazing volunteers blow the shofar and to begin your own personal journey towards a cheshbon hanefesh, accounting of your soul.  For more information about the shofar and High Holyday preparations please enjoy these articles: http://www.myjewishlearning.com/holidays/Jewish_Holidays/Rosh_Hashanah/In_the_Community/Shofar.shtml and http://blogs.rj.org/blog/2012/08/21/rosh-hashanah-teaches-us-about-making-every-moment-count/.

As the New Year approaches, I hope that if I have wronged or hurt you in any way, that you will find a way to forgive me so that we can move into the year 5773 with a clean slate and open hearts and minds.  Please know that I forgive you for anything that you might have said or done during the past year that might have hurt me and that I hope that we will find a way in the coming year to study, learn, sing and pray together in a relationship of understanding and love.

L’shalom,

Cantor Margot

A little sheet rock makes a world of difference and our new Sanctuary is starting to look more like a room and less like a construction zone.  This week, work began on closing the walls and completing the bimah flooring.  Our roof and air conditioning are being completed and we are looking forward to next week when we will continue to see the room progress toward the finished product.  Please see the below pictures for an updated view of the progress done this week.

Immediately after Shabbat ends tomorrow, I will be flying with a group of congregants to Israel.  We will spend next Shabbat in Jerusalem, a long distance – both physically and spiritually – from the Shabbat with which I began my summer, in the Sephardic synagogue in Marrakech, Morocco.  The congregation we’ll join for prayer next week is Har El synagogue, the very first Reform congregation in Israel, founded in 1958.  Just like American liberal Judaism, progressive synagogues in Israel are changing quite a bit.  When I first went to Har El in 1982, the musical accompaniment was a harp!  It was very angelic, but felt a little odd.  Today it is largely guitar, and many of the melodies will be familiar to our TBA members.

It is customary to offer a public blessing to anyone traveling to the land of Israel, and we will be doing this at both our Reform and Conservative services this weekend.  Please join us tonight at 8:00 p.m. and/or tomorrow at 9:00 a.m. for reinvigorating Shabbat worship, and to bid a “n’siya tova” – safe journey” to our travelers.

What was the best thing that happened to you this past week? What was the worst?

One of the things my family likes to do on Shabbat is a game we call “high/low”. After we light the candles, we each say what our “high” moment was during the week and what our “lowest” moment was. It is often fascinating to hear what my children say. There are so many times when something I didn’t even know mattered to them, pops up as a high or a low.

Looking at this past week, I personally can name many highs – visiting my kids and the TBA kids at Camp Eisner, getting good news about a friend’s medical condition and finally being able to turn around on pointe in my ballet class. And of course I can name many lows as well. But this week, I find myself thinking more about the communal highs and lows then the personal ones. We had the absolute tragedy of the shooting at the Sikh Temple in Wisconsin. The word “low” doesn’t even come close to accurately portraying the frustration and sadness around us.

And then, there were also communal highs — Like our girl Aly Raisman winning an Olympics individual Gold Medal on the floor exercise. You notice I said “our” girl. That’s because Aly is a member of our tribe. Yes this young girl is a member of the 2012 USA Gymnastics team, but she is also a member of our team simply because she is Jewish. Her success, as seen on the cover of the NY Post on Wednesday, proudly advertised her as a “Star of David”.  I don’t even read the Post, but I had to buy this one. Her incredible success – to Havah Nagilah floor music no less – was a fantastic communal moment.

I hope you will take a moment this Shabbat to ask your family, or even just yourself, what was your high? What was you low? Were there communal highs and lows too?  And here’s to hoping the week ahead is filled with lots of joy!

Shabbat Shalom!  This week’s Torah portion, Va-et’chanan, includes a repetition of the 10 commandments.  The first time we hear the 10 commandments, we are encamped at the base of Mount Sinai, a free people for the first time. Tired, hungry, thirsty and scared we hear God’s voice say:

1. I am the Lord Your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.
2. You shall have no other gods beside Me.
3. You shall not take the name of the Lord Your God in vain.
4. Remember the Sabbath, to keep it holy.
5. Honor your father and your mother,
6. You shall not murder.
7. You shall not commit adultery.
8. You shall not steal.
9. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
10. You shall not covet your neighbor’s house, nor his wife, his man-servant, his maid-servant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is your neighbor’s.

We move from our relationship with God, to our relationship with ourselves, to our relationship with the world.

This week, our Torah portion finds us encamped on the shore of the Jordan preparing to finally enter the land.  Unlike the generation that stood at Sinai, this generation is young, excited and can’t wait to conquer the Promised Land and fulfill God’s promise.  Here the 10 commandments come from Moses, who recites them verbatim, except for the fourth commandment which now becomes Guard the Sabbath, to keep it holy.

What does it mean to remember?  To remember seems to be in the past.  Is God suggesting that they don’t have to keep the Sabbath now that they are free but they have to remember what it was like?  Is God suggesting that now more than ever, as they wander through the desert, that if they are not careful it will be difficult to remember to observe Shabbat at all?

What does it mean to guard?  Who are we guarding it from?  Who are we guarding it for?

What is the difference between remember and guard?

To remember/guard the Sabbath is the commandment that moves us from our relationship with God to our relationship with ourselves.  What are you going to do this Shabbat to remember or guard the Sabbath?

Join us for Shabbat services at 7:00pm as we remember and guard as a community this most holy day of the week!

44.

That’s how many days there are between this moment and the opening day of Sunday school in the fall. (We begin September 9^th for those of you who would like to double-check my math!).  I suppose I could now continue with all the usual reminders like, “If you haven’t registered your kids for school, do so asap” (which of course you should) or “Don’t forget to have your kids look at some Hebrew this summer!” (which of course they should).

But actually, I am looking at the 44 days in a different way. I see it as a midpoint.

There are approximately as many days of summer behind us as there are ahead of us. So I invite you all to take a moment, as I have done, to ask yourselves “What was it I said I was going to do this summer?” Was this the summer you were going to organize that pesky linen closet? Start exercising? Finally get to the dentist? Learn to play tennis? Clean out the garage? Read? What was it that you set as your goals for the summer of 2012?

As someone who works 6 days a week the rest of the year, I can tell you for certain that this summer, like all the others, came with a long list of things I wanted to accomplish: Read the stack of books that have accumulated on my nightstand; overhaul my ridiculously messy office; Go for my checkups at the doctor and dentist; learn to play the guitar sitting in my attic; Sew the pile of clothes that have tears and missing buttons. The list goes on. And so being at the midway point does make me a little nervous because summer is flying by and although I have (check!) read most of the books and (check!) sewed all the clothing, I am still only halfway through the office overhaul, nowhere with my guitar, and haven’t even made appointments with the doctor or dentist.  So I now realize that I have 44 days to get my act in gear. It feels like a lot of days but we all know that labor day will be here in a moment.

I hope all of you have been able to check off some of the items on your summertime checklist. And if you haven’t, then use this as your reminder to get started.

We’re halfway there. 44 days to go. Make each one count!

I had the privilege last week of welcoming Shabbat in the synagogue in Marrakech with a handful of the remaining Jews of Morocco.  It was remarkable to be unable to communicate with most of the worshippers, and yet be able to pick up a siddur and pray with them.  I tell all our b’nei mitzvah students that one of the goals of their training is that they will be able to walk into a synagogue anywhere in the world and feel connected – and my experience in Marrakech is exactly what I mean.  Some of the melodies were familiar, though most were not.  They sang Mi Chamocha to the tune of Jerusalem of Gold, and Yigdal to Hatikvah.  But we were able to follow along and join in.  And at the end, the warm wishes of “Shabbat Shalom” were very familiar.

The 100 or so Jews of Marrakech struggle to put together a minyan each week, and they wonder how much longer they will be able to do it.  Helping them made me appreciate again the size and the vibrance of the Westchester Jewish community. We generally take it as a given that minyans – and even synagogues – will be here when we need them.  I encourage you to take advantage of – and to support – our local prayer community!  I promise that the melodies will be familiar, and you’ll have a wonderful experience.  Join us this Friday and Saturday!  Shabbat Shalom!