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Congregation Or Chadash THE NEW LIGHT JOURNAL Volume 1 Issue 1 December 2019 100 Menorah Celebration at Temple Emanu-El, 225 North Country Club Road Celebrate the Festival of Lights with friends and family! Join us as we celebrate Chanukah and Shabbat with food, stories, prayers and songs. Bring your own Chanukiah (menorah) with seven candles to light up the 6th night of Chanukah with our friends at Temple Emanu-El! $5.00 per person over 13 years old RSVP by Friday , December 20th Vegan option available Let us know you are joining us! 5:30 p.m. Outdoor Menorah Lighting on Country Club 5:45 p.m. Latke, soup and salad nosh 6:30 p.m. Chanukah and Shabbat service 7:30 p.m. Oneg Shabbat Table of Contents Cantor & Rabbi .............................................................. 2 Laurie Kassman & Jen Gold .......................................... 3 Julia Berg .......................................................................... 4 Latke Recipes ................................................................... 5 Katie Louchheim ............................................................ 6 Zora Shaw and Board Nominations ............................. 7 Dana Adler and Charitable Giving ............................... 8 Andrew Pawlicki-Sinclair ............................................. 9 Amy Hirshberg Lederman ............................................ 10 Elaine Jones and Events.................................................. 11 Chanukah Blessings ....................................................... 12 Calendar ........................................................................... 13 Life Cycle & Donations................................................... 14-15 The New Light Journal is a brand new opportunity for members of our congregation to share ideas and musings with their fellow congregants. This journal contains articles from writers of varying ages, genders, and backgrounds. Our team of writers in this first issue of our journal explore their immersion in their Jewish community. They explore the vital role individuals and others play in the life of a community. You will be introduced to people you might never meet and make you feel connected. We hope everyone will benefit from hearing from these diverse voices. In this issue we asked ten people to reflect on Chanukah or the value of rededication, which is the meaning of the holiday. They were told to be as creative as they could imagine. Our next journal is scheduled to be published at the beginning of the summer. Our theme will be “How do you prepare for a sweet New Year?” Our deadline will be the 1st of April. In future issues, we hope to meet many more congregants who make the Tucson Jewish community a special place to live. Cantor Janece Cohen Thank God for Reform Judaism by Rabbi Louchheim Recently I read an article by one of my your lives, then don’t do it! colleagues who stated that Reform Now, for those who attend services. Do you attend every Judaism has no guiding principles nor week? Do you understand all the Hebrew? Do you ideology and that individual Jews comprehend why the prayers are written and ordered the within the movement also have no way they are? For many in our religious community, the ideology. Additionally, he views most answer is, “No.” Why attend, then? For the very reason Reform Jews as non-observant, lacking given in the Pittsburgh Platform: Hebrew comprehension, as well as lacking an understanding of Jewish history and 1. Services give me a sense of calm after a difficult week. many of its rituals. There is truth in much of what he 2. It is what I do on a Friday night. says; however, I believe he misses the point about what Reform Judaism is meant to represent for us. 3. I might learn something from the rabbi. It seems to me that this critique represents a low 4. I am Jewish. I go to services. level of thinking in an educational sense. This lowest 5. I am saying Kaddish for a family member. level is represented through knowledge and comprehension. That is to say that this By the way, if you do any of this and also follow certain understanding is based on facts and an ability to customs that have been passed down to you from your recall and understand details. A higher level of parents and grandparents, then you are an “observant Jew.” thinking is represented by judgment and an ability to Do not let someone who belongs to an Orthodox or integrate values into one’s thinking and activities. Conservative synagogue deny you that honor. The best example is through the examination of one Yes, most Reform Jews know little more than “I enjoy of the most enigmatic ritual commandments found in Reform more than Conservative and Orthodox, which can the Torah: The red heifer. The unanswered problem be too demanding upon me.” That certainly is one answer. that arises from this ritual (which has never been More directly, there is no need to compare your practice of answered by any rabbinic authority to anyone’s Judaism with what others are doing. From our observance, satisfaction) is, how can a ritual that is to make an “unclean” person “clean” make the priest who is as Reform Jews, we are learning values and virtues that administering it “unclean?” elevate and sanctify our lives and the lives of others. Some of us are bound together by a common theology. Others are on Rabbi Joshua of Siknin has stated that the ritual of a personal odyssey of their own. For many of us there is a the red heifer is one of four laws in the Torah that commitment to a universal moral aspiration that we are have no rational explanation. Traditional authorities committed to preserving the welfare of others and to our have stated that we observe these laws because God environment, both which are threatened like never before. told us to. There is no need to understand them. Now, the founders of Reform Judaism maintain that What is also enduring is our Movement’s intellectual we ought to observe only those rules that “elevate honesty to look at traditions and religious thinking and and sanctify our lives” (Pittsburgh Platform, 1885). challenge them to speak the truth to our very souls. Finally, The upshot is, if you do not understand it, if it does have you learned to be more kind, loving, passionate, and nothing to make you a better person or improve caring? If so, thank God for Reform Judaism! December 2019 2 My Tribe by Laurie A. Kassman I did not grow up a Jew; “Well, I’m not stepping foot inside a menorah and the visits from in fact, my parents did building with a man on a cross,” friends. Latkes are a favorite at not practice any religion. and so our attendance at synagogue our house this time of year and The only time that they began. It grew with the birth of my Yes, “Chanukah Harry” does ever went to church was son, Dylan. As he began his make his entrance! “Chanukah” to attend a funeral or a religious studies, I began to increase means “rededication” and wedding. This always my knowledge of Judaism and every year as the calendar bothered me, because began to feel a deeper and draws closer it’s end, I am from a place deep in my profound comfort within the walls reminded that a new beginning being I felt that I needed to go, I of Or Chadash. comes with the turning of the needed a place that I could connect page. I get to start new goals, with a something bigger than My favorite Christian holiday has rekindle friendships, start new myself. I would get myself up as a always been Christmas, not because ones, and look forward to a young child, dress, and walk the of the gifts, but because of the brand new start. I love being a four blocks to my girlfriend’s house traditions that Jew and a part of a so that I could attend services with my family had. tribe. It makes me feel her family. My parents always The tree welcome and safe, and thought I was “odd” for needing decorating was it’s at this time of the this connection, but they allowed it always was done year that I can reflect just the same. with Christmas and appreciate my music, hot chocolate and little My Judaism journey started when I place among friends old and marshmallows, beautiful twinkling met my husband Andy. Even new. lights, and laughter, so much though he only attended services on laughter and joy. And there were Thank you for being a special the High Holy Days and for bar/bat the family visits from relatives that part of “my tribe”. mitzvahs and weddings, I told him we only seen once a year. that we either went to church or to synagogue, it was his choice, but we So, it’s no surprise that my favorite needed to attend one of them on a Jewish holiday is Chanukah! I love regular basis. His answer to me was to decorate a “Chanukah Bush” with blue and silver, and white twinkle lights. The lighting of the Chanukah in the Holy Land by Jenifer Gold The smell of oil doing so in order to publicize the miracle of permeated the air, and my Chanukah. In Jerusalem, the awareness of that feet twisted and miracle is clear and visible. Stores have turned over the Chanukiot in their windows, families cobble stone as I place their menorahs in the window for walked down the their neighbors to see, the extra-large street to meet a friend. The lights Chanukiah that stands at the bottom of glistened from the windows of Ben Yehuda Street is a beautiful apartments that lined the street on presence, and in any direction one can either side of me. With each passing find fresh sufganiot (doughnuts) to night, with each adventure, the lights enjoy. For eight joyous days the city became brighter and brighter.