Temple B'nai Jeshurun

Between the unwanted snow of spring and the emotional clutter we feel from the saturation of very real and frightening problems around the world, we seem to stare into the clouds, wondering what will fall out of the sky next. I imagine this is not the only complicated period of history, but it certainly seems to rank on a Top Ten List that would not quite fit the late night comedy routine.

As always, we at TBJ are here to help both navigate and attempt to understand these unfathomable days. We will do so by communicating by email, blog and of course, from the Pulpit. We will also be sure to help the children of our congregation make as much sense as possible of the happenings in the world.

In the midst of it all, we should definitely not try to chart our course by staying at home. Our Tradition insists that in the midst of it all, we need to live and study and embrace the life we have around us.

Thus, please do so in two important ways this coming weekend. First, come and enjoy and let go at Purimania on Saturday night. Believe me, we can all use a communal party.

And the when you wake up the next morning, come and STUDY about one of the most compelling religious questions ever to be asked.

This Sunday at 9:45 AM, will be the kick off of a two-week class called:

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BELIEVE IN A JEWISH AFTERLIFE? Jews don’t believe in an afterlife, right?  Well, nobody knows for sure.  Most of us are under the misconception that there is no Jewish belief in an afterlife.  Not true!  In this class, you will be able to explore the vast Jewish traditional belief in an afterlife.  We will study through the eyes of our Sages of Old, ideas like:  Immortality of the Soul, Physical Resurrection; and even Transmigration of the Soul… a Jewish version of reincarnation.  As well, we will share our own thoughts of the possibilities of what happens after we die.  The mixture of tradition and personal journey will make for a compelling recipe

This Class will be uniquely taught from both a spiritual (Rabbi Gewirtz) and psychological perspective (our Resident Social Worker: Ilana Mazur). This will be an experience that you will not want to miss. In the midst of all of the dizzying activity, come and find balance as we explore together.

I can’t tell you how many from our community come in to talk about the process of aging……either one’s own process; or the journey we travel with our aging parents.  The issues which arise, bring struggle and yes, in many cases, a sense of blessing.  Too many of us struggle alone with our decisions, guilt and fear.  I am grateful every time one of you trusts me or one of my colleagues here, to help you navigate your course.

To respond more thoroughly to this vital subject, we welcome Rabbi Alan Abraham Kay to B’nai Jeshurun, as our Scholar-In-Residence this coming Friday night and Saturday morning for Friday Night Shabbat Services and Torah Study Shabbat morning.  Rabbi Kay will speak directly and sensitively to the issues of our own aging and the aging of those whom we love.  He will do so through a sermon Friday night and through teaching Saturday morning.  Rabbi Kay will speak as a professional, but also from a personal place.

Please make yourselves available for either or both(Friday night: 5:30PM; Shabbat morning: 8:45AM).  It will be incredibly worthwhile.  Rabbi Kay is a dear and personal friend, who has literally touched thousands of people, first as a professor of English and then as a rabbi.  His grace, sophistication and intellect will both compel your mind and stir your heart.  I urge you to join us.

I asked Rabbi Kay to give you just a taste of what he is thinking on the matter.  The following is what he sent me.

Rabbi Gewirtz has asked me what I am thinking as I prepare for my visit to B’nai Jeshurun this coming weekend….a weekend I call, “Aging with Grace and Holiness.” As I am on my own journey, feeling both the joy and sadness of the passing years, and some of the anguish, I am thinking there is no time I would rather be alive than the present. Like the etrog, I have thrived in the sun and in the storm and like the olive, although I have been pressed and beaten, I am still a source for fire and light. Torah cannot take away the pain and fear that accompanies aging, but Torah can help us to appreciate that we are not alone in our pain and that even with our pain we can still make a positive difference in our own lives and in the lives of our families and our communities: aging and saging are not just rhyming words, they remind us that even grey hairs need to be combed. What is your vision of aging? Can Torah broaden that vision? Share with us this Friday night and Saturday morning as we walk the Torah and learn together. Come and be with your community and be touched by a mensch and a fine teacher of Torah.

Warmly,

Matthew

Very rarely have I felt the need to reach out to you as many times as I have in the past few weeks.  It seems that recent national and world events continue to both astound and test our personal and collective will as Americans and Jews.

I have literally wanted to write to you about the crisis in Egypt daily. However, like many of you, it has hard for me to make sense of what is happening there because of its extremely fluid nature.

As always, I reach out to you as your rabbi and not as a Middle East Academic or politician.  There are those out there, whose knowledge in this area is much more in depth than my own; and there are as well, those out there who make comment for the purpose of reaching and reacting to a particular political audience.  I speak to you as your rabbi…..a concerned Jewish American leader.

I have always felt great paradox as it relates to my feelings about Egypt.  Way beyond the significant role Egypt has played in our religious history(most of which I refer to for pedagogic and spiritual purposes), I have known this country since I was seventeen years of age. I travelled to Egypt for ten days in 1983.  Israelis were only beginning to travel to Egypt at that point, not many years after the Camp David Accords were signed.  I was living in Israel that year and went to visit Egypt on vacation.  I have been there four times since and each time I have vowed not to return.  This vow has not come from any prejudice against the Egyptian People.  It has been quite the opposite.  I have very rarely been as disgusted by the manner in which the people there are treated by the government.  Egypt is the “real life” Third World. Minors work rock labor in the streets of Cairo and more people than should be allowed, live in utter squalor.  It is easy for the visitor to see how there is no opportunity and potential for the Commoner to break out of the bonds of governmental affliction.  As an American who knows full well that our democracy is not perfect; still, the blatant dictatorship made me sick to my stomach.

The Paradox:  The paradox is that this same country I write of above with some level of disgust, once had a leader named Anwar Sadat who had the courage to come to Jerusalem and make peace.  President Sadat died because of his conviction and his successor President Hosni Mubarak has done nothing but maintain that peace with our brothers and sisters in Israel.  The peace has been a cold one, but it has caused not one moment of concern on Israel’s southern border for over three decades now. Moreover, President Mubarak has worked tirelessly, as an American and Israeli ally: he has spent a lot of his career striving to set an example to other Arab governments to imagine and forge a comprehensive peace with Israel.  Every Israeli Prime Minister, beginning with Prime Minister Begin, has looked to Egypt to help pave the way for lasting peace.  Indeed, without President Mubarak, we would not have come nearly as close as we have to reaching peace with the Palestinians as well as other surrounding Arab nations.

Finding a way for President Mubarak to make a graceful exit in the face of peaceful demonstrations is complicated.  He deserves at least that after serving for so many years.  As Americans, who embrace the notion of freedom and democracy, it has been impossible not to be moved by the organic gathering of the common Egyptian seeking the chance for a better life.  We all deserve the opportunity for existential safety and fulfillment.

The problem of course is that we have no idea what a democratic process might produce in Egypt.  As Jews and Zionists, we cannot bear the thought of a government which might renege on an decades-old peace agreement.  In fact that idea is antithetical to Israel’s own existential dreams and hopes.  The tight rope we need to walk here is to support an Egyptian democracy which represents the kinds of progression we see in a couple of other Arab democracies, where there is no reason to do anything but to have relations with a modern and economically vibrant Israel.

Until yesterday, I have appreciated the way the Egyptian President has allowed his people to voice their peaceful frustrations.  The unleashing of violence which has recently taken hold, however, is utterly abhorrent behavior.  President Mubarak, as difficult as it must be, can find a hero’s way out.  The unleashing of dictatorial terror on to his own people will only serve to bring him down violently and; in the end Egypt, may look more like Iran than other political options which could take hold if handled properly.

Please join me in praying for the safety of our brothers and sisters in Israel.  And during this period as well, I want Egyptian people to know that we pray for their freedom and safety as well.

For Israeli perspective(which I know many of us are looking for these days), please feel free to click the links to the following reputable Israeli newspapers.  They represent left and right of center.

http://www.haaretz.com/

http://www.jpost.com/

At the halfway point of our Israeli journey, our group has already experienced so many profoundly moving moments. On Monday, in Tel Aviv, we recited Kaddish for Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin at the site of his 1995 assassination. On Tuesday, in Haifa, we spent a memorable afternoon at the Leo Baeck Education Center (www.leobaeck.org.il), where we were hosted by Rabbi Ofek Meir, a leader who is (almost!) as dynamic and inspiring as our own Rabbi Matt!

Then, Wednesday morning, we left our kibbutz hotel in northern Israel and rode over to Mount Bental. The visit there provided not only some incredible vistas–views of Lebanon, Syria, and Israel’s Hula Valley. It also gave us clearer insights into the territory’s fraught and bloody history, as well as a deeper understanding of how essential an area the Golan Heights is to Israel’s security (not to mention its water supply).

I can’t possibly capture here the spiritual elements of our group’s experience at Mount Bental, but I hope that this post provides at least a glimmer of our shared journey so far.

-Erika Dreifus

Our trip has been planned for months.  Oy, the details, especially for Renee Sherman and Linda Levi.  And now I sit in anticipation of arrival with 70 plus members from TBJ, each of them with the mixed look of exhaustion from a long journey and the the intense light of anticipation.  Ten hours on an airplane already gives each of us the sense that we we will see each other a bit mire “rugged” than we do when we appear in the hallways if our Temple in our well heeled manner.  That is actually a good sign for the trip.  The more quickly we take off the safety tools of home and open our hearts to the experience, all the more quickly will we immerse ourselves in the Israeli experience.

It is 10/10/10.  That combination of numbers  is a seldom occurrence.  If anything, it is unique, and maybe even a good cosmic sign.

I look forward by way of ending the entry, to letting you know what happens upon arrival; our first evening, where anticipation will give way to scared experience.

We are a people of dreams and hopes.  It all started here, literally where we are sitting.  We are in the place where the Jonah story goes from the the Torah scroll to reality; fro.m the place where The Sea split; the place where we were redeemed to a the Land of Milk and Honey. These are the streets of King David; where God commanded Abraham to sacrifice his son, Isaac. This is the place of miracles.  The place where we won wars that should not have been won.  This is where we turned sand into thriving cities; drained swamps to grow the fruit of our labor.  This is the land of heroes; where the underdog had faith that the spirit would defeat those who opposed us.

We have arrived safely and we are home.  Some of us knew it as soon as we arrived; some of us are still acclimating to that notion.  All of us know that we are not on a trip; we are indeed on a mission.

More to come……

Please respond to us….. I will read your responses to the group.

Write to us at mgewirtz@tbj.org