RABBI's MESSAGE Israel Anyone?
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APRIL 2014 NISAN 5774 CONTENTS RABBI’S MESSAGE 1 CANTOR’S RABBI’S MESSAGE CORNER 3 Israel Anyone? Rabbi Daniel Cotzin Burg PRESIDENT’S PERSPECTIVE 4 Every Shabbat morning, we chant the following words just before CONGREGATIONAL Shema: “V’havianu l’shalom me’arba kanfot ha’aretz… may God LEARNING 6 draw us together in peace from the four corners of the earth. PREPARING FOR Beth Am’s custom, like many other congregations, is to chant PESAH 8 these words to the music of Hatikvah. The liturgical moment is socially and theologically potent. We are part of a thousands- CALENDARS 11 year-old connection to the ancient land of our ancestors - Eretz CONTRIBUTIONS 14 Yisrael - and simultaneously bound to Medinat Yisrael, the modern manifestation of that ancient land and the fulfillment of UPCOMING our ancient yearning. EVENTS 16 It has been said in many cultures, including our own, that one COMMUNITY 20 cannot truly know another until having had the experience of NEWS another. It’s equally true that one cannot begin to understand a ANNUAL FUND 22 place until one has sampled her cuisine, walked her sidewalks, absorbed her language, grappled firsthand with her societal challenges, navigated her forests or explored the ancient layers of civilization beneath her streets. Perhaps this is why one of Abraham’s first tasks is to “walk the length and breadth of the land” which he and his progeny are about to inherit (Gen. 13:17). Visit us on line at: No less than a modern miracle enables us to do what the first bethambaltimore.org Jew did approximately 4,000 years ago - to traverse and explore and now you can: the Land of Israel. In doing so, one cannot help but witness her triumphs and struggles, her joy and sadness. And one discovers, of US course, that Israel is a living, breathing thing...learning, growing ON and adapting as she matures in her sixth decade. To know Israel facebook.com/ is to go there, ideally again and again, the way we come back to a BethAmBaltimore lover or a friend. Rabbi cont’d on page 5 Standing Committees Adult Ed Chair Elaine Weiss BETH AM BOARD Adult Ed Co-Chair Carla Rosenthal Finance Chair Alan Kopolow Rabbi Daniel Cotzin Burg Finance Co-Chair Joe Wolfson House Chair Sam Polakoff Officers Kiddush Chair Meg Hyman President Scott Zeger Membership Chair Sharon Nathanson 1st Vice President Julie Gottlieb Membership Co-Chair Robin Katcoff 2nd Vice President Alyson Bonavoglia Religious Services Chair Joe Wolfson Treasurer Alan Kopolow Social Action Chair Arthur Shulman Secretary Elaine Weiss Social Action Co-Chair Jackie Donowitz Youth Education Chair David Lunken Trustees through 2014 Betty Chemers Jerry Doctrow Ad Hoc Committees Annual Fund Honorary Chair Gil Sandler Emily Demsky Annual Fund Chair Eliza Feller Ashley Pressman Annual Fund Co-Chair Jim Jacobs Balt. Jewish Council Rep. Ben Rosenberg Trustees through 2015 Beth Am Connection Joanne Katz Eliza Feller Risa Jampel Cheri Levin BAYITT Co-Chair Brian Ross David Lunken BAYITT Co-Chair Erica Allen Lynn Sassin Congregant to Congregant Joyce Keating Eutaw Place Ellen Kahan Zager Trustees through 2016 Jack Zager Neil Kahn In, For and Of Lisa Akchin Cindy Paradies Maggi Gaines Desiree Robinson Marketing Chair Ellen Spokes Jim Schwartz Operations Co-Chair Ashley Pressman Operations Co-Chair David Demsky Past President Cy Smith Past President Jack Lapides RHIC Rep. Carol Shulman Honorary Life Member Lainy LeBow-Sachs Honorary Life Member Efrem Potts Office Hours After hours office phone numbers: Tuesday-Thursday: 9:00-4:00 Rabbi Daniel Cotzin Burg Friday: 9:00-3:00 443.202.0912 (cell) (emergencies only, please) or [email protected] Phone: Tel: 410.523.2446 Cantor Ira Greenstein Fax: 410.523.1729 443.759.7807 (home) Extentions: [email protected] Rabbi Burg - 14 Rabbi Gludt - 15 Rabbi Kelley Gludt, Director of Henry Feller, Exec. Dir. - 20 Congregational Learning Linda Small, Coordinator - 12 520.248.9541 (cell) Ralph Shaver - Finance Assoc. -18 [email protected] Norm Weinstein, Bookkeeper - 17 Marsha Blank, Educator - 16 Scott L. Zeger, Board President Gail Wohlmuth, Admin. Spec. - 21 410.868.7761 Nakia Davis, Admin. Assist. - 11 [email protected] Valerie Tracy, Marketing - 10 In case of an emergency, please contact: E-mail: Henry Feller [email protected] Email: [email protected] Executive Director 410.602.2124 (home) Web site: www.bethambaltimore.org 2 3 CANTOR’S CORNER Chad Gadya Cantor Ira Greenstein Towards the end of a Passover Seder, “My father bought for 2 zuzim”: Idelsohn children of all ages like to sing the notes that David paid 24 zuzim total for cumulative song Chad Gadya (One Little the Temple place, collecting 2 zuzim from Kid). It is one of several such songs wherein each tribe. The Vilna Gaon interpreted that each verse builds on the one before. But the 2 zuzim were the bread and stew that unlike the other favorite Echad Mi Yodei’a Jacob paid Esau for the birthright given by (Who Knows One), Chad Gadya is written Isaac, and then beginning with the Father in (or translated into) Aramaic. There are being Jacob, goes through the “victims” several ways to see this allegorical little ditty, as Egypt, Moses’ staff, idolatry, and so on. details of which I personally only learned as Perhaps most logical (and my preference) is an adult. that God “bought” the Israelites with two tablets at Mount Sinai. The more common The musicologist A.Z. Idelsohn noted interpretation of rest of the allegorical that the oldest print version is found in references goes like this: 1590 in Prague, but we also know that this song was used in the Southern French One Kid = the Temple or the Jewish communities of Provence, and has been people part of the Ashkenazic, Oriental-Sephardic, and Baghdad rituals. It dates back at least as The Cat = Nebuchadnezzar, the Babylonian far as the 13th century. This is not uniquely king who destroyed the Temple and exiled Jewish and Passover-related, though … for the Jews (in one early version, this was a example, there are similar “nursery” songs dog rather than a cat) in France, Bosnia, Spain, and Germany. The theme crosses cultures and centuries. The Dog = Cyrus, the Persian king who conquered Babylonia and allowed the Jews Chad Gadya is a mini-history lesson. In a to return and rebuild the Temple brief tiptoe through Internet sources and my personal bookshelf, there are numerous The Stick = Alexander the Great, the varied renditions of what the “victims” of Greek / Macedonian leader who subdued the song might mean. The Father seems to Persia be consistently God, but did He buy the The Fire = The Maccabees, who were Kid or sell it? There are two versions, both victorious over the Greeks of which I have seen in recent Hagaddah renditions: the word dizvan in some The Water = Rome, which destroyed the Hagaddot means bought, while the dizaben second Temple and crushed the Jewish in other sources means sold. Given the people again materiel below, let’s go with buying. Cantor cont’d on page 5 3 PRESIDENT’S PERSPECTIVE In Like a Lamb, Out Like a Lion Scott Zeger This March - in like a lion - has been an John Freeman’s funeral at Sol Levinson’s average of 19°F colder than the long-term assembled a diverse audience of extended average. It is a hard end to a long Baltimore family, Beth Am congregants, colleagues winter. At Beth Am Shabbat services, from Johns Hopkins, and people from the Yahrzeit lists are longer than usual reflecting many families whose lives John touched. the toll of winters’ past. Our congregation The attendees were regaled with stories of lost many special members or relatives John’s clinical prowess and of his love of a this winter. May their memories serve as good wager by his sons by Ron Peterson, a blessing to their loved ones in the years Johns Hopkins Hospital President. At ahead. the Freeman shiva house, I went upstairs to hang our coats. The hallway was filled Last month I wrote about Beth Am’s B’nai with photographic portraits of Elaine on Mitzvah, when a family worships with her wedding day. She was such a beautiful the congregation in celebration of their bride, tears formed in my eyes. And now, daughter’s or son’s acceptance of adult when I see Elaine at a Beth Am Shabbat, I standing as a Jew. Beth Am’s ritual practice see her with new eyes, touched by her other at the end of life imparts similar meaning. relationships with her family, so apparent in While each of our member’s deaths has the ceremonies surrounding John’s passing. affected the lives of many, permit me to briefly mention two recent end-of-life Births, B’nai Mitzvah, weddings, and events as representative of them all. funerals are life events which delineate an individual’s life and its influence on family, Within one week in January, 2014, the friends and community. They contribute Feller family lost its beloved Blanche to strengthening our social fabric. Judaism, and the Freeman family lost a Baltimore as practiced at Beth Am, is the fabric that original in John. For each family, Beth Am’s binds us as a nurturing community. May clergy, staff, and members created a loving Beth Am provide a home for all such space in which mourning could begin. events, celebrations and recollections, for Two hundred people assembled at Beth the next 40 years as it has for the past 40. Am when the Feller family returned from Blanche’s Monticello funeral for a memorial And about March - out like a lamb.