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Yom Ha'atzma'ut! e-mail: [email protected] website: http://www.cbi18.org RELIGIOUS SCHOOL CALENDAR & SYNAGOGUE EVENTS LISTED Everybody Loves a Celebration and what a Celebration it is ~ Vol. XIX, No. 5 Yom Ha’atzma’ut! Iyar ~ Sivan Sunday, May 15 ~ 12:30 – 3:00 PM May ~ June 2011 The Festivities Go On and On: Israeli Lunch, Moroccan and Bedouin Foods! Wine Tasting! • Kvod the Magician! Israeli Singing and Dancing! Rock-Climbing just like the rocks at Ein-Gedi! Laying T’fellin! • Write Notes to be sent to the Kotel! Kibbutz Life! • An Archeology Dig! • Raffle prizes! $5/Person, Children 3 years and under Free RSVP to the CBI Office by May 9th Celebrate Yom Ha’atzma’ut with Rabbi Miri Gold Celebrate Rosh Chodesh Sivan with Sisterhood of Kehilat Birkat Shalom, Kibbutz Gezer, Israel! Thursday, June 2 at 7:30 PM Monday, May 9 at 7:00 PM Ingrid Gallin is speaking: 8:15 PM: Short Minha Service “Growing Up in Shanghai” Dessert and Coffee Immediately Following Service An event not to be missed! Rabbi Gold will present a section of the Israel Declaration of Independence and discuss how it relates to Modern-Day Israel and its challenges of human and civil rights, and religious pluralism. Yom Ha’atzma’ut ~ Shacharit Service CBI Presents~ Artist in Residence Tuesday, May 10 ~ 7:30 AM Please RSVP to the CBI Office Edna Miron-Wapner Sunday, May 15 3:00 – 5:00 PM ‘Twas the Night before Shavuos and all through the Shul, in the Family Life Center everyone was studying and learning – it was so very cool! Come Experience Expressive Kavannah, a Come join Rabbi Spitz and Cantor Tilchin along with other Technique of Expressive Arts community scholars for CBI’s annual Tikkun L’eil Shavuot: Therapy for those drawn to Tuesday, June 7: 8:25 PM – Midnight their Jewish Identity! This workshop relates PLEASE NOTE: to the weekly Tikkun L’eil Shavuot is preceded by Ma’ariv Service at 8:00 PM Parashat of Bahar~ Come explore your Creativity ALSO PLEASE NOTE: within a supportive group! Shavuot Schaharit Services on Wednesday and Thursday, $10/person June 8 and 9 at 9:30 AM RSVP to the CBI Office The Shofar page 1 readings a couple of years ago. What thing we can experience is the fascinated me was both how much mysterious. It is the source of all true Rabbi’s Message the Israelites shared in common with art and science.” Rabbi Elie Spitz their surrounding neighbors- such as On Shavuot, we celebrate the slavery, polygamy, and the sacrificial gift of the Torah and the mystery of form of worship- and even more so, revelation. For our people, the Torah what was unique to the Torah. Only the is a love letter from God. Yes, people Torah, for instance, forbade the eating wrote it, but the wisdom of Torah of blood. The underlying reason was emerged intuitively from our reaching to express that God ultimately controls beyond ourselves and hearing a life. As blood is identified with life, it still, silent voice calling us toward belongs only to God. justice and love. The Torah is our On a stroll with Professor Milgrom, Jewish foundation for growing lives of I asked him, “Why did you spend over meaning, belonging, and fulfillment. I twenty years researching the details read the Torah as a modern person, of the Levitical laws.” aware of the limitations of the past and Shavuot: A celebration of God, “The laws of the Torah,” he the enduring richness of our people’s Torah, and Spiritual Genius. responded, “are vessels for values. spiritual genius. To understand the details of ritual • I am a Conservative Jew because God wrote E=MC2. laws is to uncover the contours and I live with the tension between “Einstein,” you say. content of enduring values. Ideas are tradition and change, like a musical “Yes, him too.” intellectually known, but each time we string pulled in two opposite I once asked my teacher and the perform a ritual we relive, re-express, directions that enables a melodic, editor of the Etz Hayim Bible, “Who and rediscover those values with our stirring note; wrote the Bible?” whole body.” • I am a Conservative Jew because “People,” he replied. The Torah contains many I believe that people can be “And what was the place of God?” distinctive laws and rituals, such as God’s vessels, both in hearing a I persisted. demanding that one day a week we transcendent call and as God’s “God enables genius, whether refrain from work and commerce. The eyes, ears, hands, and feet to effect in Shakespeare, Mozart, or a great value conveyed by Shabbat is that healing in God’s creation; scientist. The Torah is a work of God is in charge and that we need • I am a Conservative Jew because spiritual genius.” to prioritize time to forge relationships I believe that the Torah is God’s My teachers in Rabbinical School with those around us and with God. sacred revelation, but not God’s shared the modern perspective that Our Torah demanded that landowners last word; ideas have a history. They taught were to provide for the poor, pieces • I am a Conservative Jew because that the Torah unfolded over time of social legislation that were radical the Torah challenges and uplifts us- and emerged from specific historical for the ancient world and persist as a and in parts, repels us too- calling us settings. During the exile in Babylonia, challenge of hope making and justice toward humbly honoring the past, they taught, Jews began to weave oral in our own day. When the Torah states, living more wholly in the present, traditions together into a magnificent, “And God spoke to Moses saying” and trusting that we will encounter written tapestry. This description of (the Torah’s most often repeated additional wisdom ahead; the Torah’s origins conflicted with my phrase), it signifies that what follows • I am a Conservative Jew because I childhood teachers who instructed is our people’s best understanding believe that the mitzvot of the Torah me that God had dictated the words to of God’s will and values. require interpretation and form a Moses letter by letter. If people wrote Human understanding is system of values that strengthens the Torah, I was left to wonder, in what continuously unfolding by responding our bonds to the world around us sense is our Torah worth building a to changing conditions and adding and evokes the best in us; life on? new insights. Einstein’s analysis • I am a Conservative Jew because Among my favorite Bible scholars depended on a strong foundation the Torah testifies to an enduring, is Professor Jacob Milgrom. After of scientific learning, and yet his expansive, evolving Awareness, serving as a Conservative Rabbi insights also emerged intuitively. In beckoning us into relationship, “You for twenty years, he taught at the his words, “There is no logical way shall be holy for I the Lord am Holy.” University of California at Berkeley for to the discovery of these elemental May this Shavuot lead us further thirty years. Among his achievements laws. There is only the way of intuition, up the mountain of learning toward was a three-volume work on Leviticus, which is helped by a feeling for the God’s presence and mystery. And later condensed into a more order lying behind the appearance.” may we embrace the Divine gift of accessible 300-page book. I read this His creativity was linked as well to a Torah with curiosity, commitment, and commentary alongside our weekly sense of wonder, “The most beautiful creativity. A page 2 The Shofar can master. I am delighted to share JEWISH WORLD WATCH that I will be offering an introductory Cantor’s Notes class on Torah reading four Sunday WALK TO Cantor Marcia Tilchin mornings this summer – July 10, 17, END GENOCIDE 24 and August 7 at 10:30 AM. Details will be posted in the next issue of the “Shofar” and in upcoming email announcements. If you have ever thought about taking the plunge into the magical world of laining (the art of scriptural chant), please consider embarking on this journey with me. As one becomes adept at laining, the intricacies of biblical Hebrew grammar start to become apparent, prompting questions like: Why are Meet the Old Torah Reader some words accented on the final here are so many ways that syllable while others are not? Why is T Torah touches our lives. Its there a “sh’va” under an opening “vav” wisdom is woven throughout our instead of a “patah”? These are the prayers. It is our guide to ethical living. kinds of details upon which some of It is our pathway to know the many our most famous midrashim are built. faces of God. Torah’s miraculous There are several congregants at CBI essence is revealed week after week who read Torah with this degree of as we study the parshiot and extract sophistication. I encourage those of new insights every time. you at this stage of your learning to Another way to know Torah is go onto the CBI website to read some to recite it. The Jewish people have excellent essays on the finer points been chanting our sacred texts for of Torah reading and grammar from thousands of years and the fact a master of the art known to us only that we render it in the 21st century as “The Old Torah Reader”. [Click on as we did through the millennia “Clergy and Leadership”, then “Cantor is astonishing.
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