Thexsrpv Orchard Published by The Jewish Federations of North America Rabbinic Cabinet SPRING 2013 - NISSAN 5773 Thexsrpv Orchard Chair The Jewish Federations of North America Rabbinic Cabinet 3 Rabbi Stuart Weinblatt A Passover Reading 4 Passover Greetings from the JFNA Chair of the Board of Trustees 5 Vice Chairs and President and CEO Michael Siegal and Jerry Silverman Rabbi Les Bronstein Passover Greetings from the Chair of the Rabbinic Cabinet 6 Rabbi Frederick Klein Rabbi Stuart Weinblatt Rabbi Larry Kotok Passover Greetings from the Director of the Rabbinic Cabinet 7 Rabbi Gerald I. Weider President Rabbinic Cabinet Mission to Kiev and Israel February 4-12, 2013 8 Rabbi Steven Foster Rabbi Gerald I. Weider RABBINIC CABINET MISSION REFLECTIONS Director 9 JFNA Rabbinic Cabinet Rabbi Stuart Weinblatt Rabbi Misha Zinkow 11 Rabbi Gerald I. Weider Rabbi Alvin Berkun 13 Rabbi Alan Lavin 14 JFNA Chair of the Board Rabbi Ron Aigen 15 Michael Siegal Rabbi Joseph Z. Gruenberg 16 Rabbi Adam Kligfeld 17 JFNA Chair of the Rabbi Michael Stanger 19 Executive Committee Rabbi Robyn Fryer Bodzin 20 Diane Feinberg Rabbi Neal Borovitz 25 PASSOVER, SHAVUOT, ISRAEL INDEPENDENCE DAY SERMONIC THOUGHTS JFNA President and CEO Next Year in Cyprus Or El Arish 27 Jerry Silverman Rabbi Paul Kerbel Shavuot Fable 29 Allen S. Maller Is Becoming Jewish Like Falling in Love 30 Rabbi Allen S. Maller She Swam In 31 Rabbi Jessica Spitalnic Brockman Flour & Water: It’s Just A Matter Of Time 34 The Orchard Rabbi Francine Roston
Published by: Call Me Mara … Responding To People In Times Of Crisis 36 Rabbi David J. Zucker and Rabbi Bonita E. Taylor The Jewish Federations of North America December 6, 2012 37 25 Broadway, Suite 1700 Ethan Prosnit The Ins And Outs Of Chametz 40 New York, NY 10004 Rabbi Amy Scheinerman Email: [email protected] Israel At 65 42 Amy Scheinerman Spring 2013 - Nissan 5773 B’Chol Dor Va-Dor - In Every Generation 44 Rabbi Donald B. Rossoff Published in cooperation with the Rabbinic Cabinets Yom Ha’atzmaut 45 Rabbi Eric Polokoff of local Jewish Federations Reflections 47 Rabbi Barry Gelman Sinai Speaks 49 Rabbi Nicole Guzik Reflections 50 Rabbi Asher Ostrin The Matzah of Peace 53 Rabbi Neal I. Borovitz Israel Action Network Spring Information Material 54 Joint Distribution Committee 55 Jewish Agency for Israel 57 THE JEWISH FEDERATIONS OF NORTH AMERICA RABBINIC CABINET
The mission of the JFNA Rabbinic Cabinet SPECIFIC OBJECTIVES
is to unite rabbis of all ideologies in the work of 1. Raise the level of knowledge about JFNA in the kiyum ha’umah, Jewish continuity, and tzedakah, rabbinate and community.
acquaint and involve the North American rab- 2. Stimulate and support rabbinic participation in, and relationships with, JFNA and local Federations. binate with the goals and activities of JFNA, and
bring the talents, resources, and perspectives of the 3. Assist with and participate in The Federation Annual Campaign by enlarging the scope and intensity of rabbinate to JFNA and the Federation movement. synagogue involvement.
4. Upgrade rabbinic giving and increase rabbinic The cabinet serves as the rabbinic arm of JFNA, solicitations.
the major agency of North American Jewry for 5. Strengthen the rabbinic, congregational, community, agency and Federation partnership. tzedakah. It promotes the unity of the Jewish
people in its efforts to support the needs of Jews 6. Engage the next generation of rabbis.
everywhere by including rabbis from every 7. Continue education
movement in North American Jewish life. 8. Develop programs and educational materials about Israel, the Jewish tradition and Jewish peoplehood/ community. The Rabbinic Cabinet further seeks to inform 9. Serve as teachers and spiritual resources to the colleagues about the most current developments leadership and constituencies of JFNA, local in Jewish life, the needs of our people, and the federations and the Jewish community.
techniques for effective utilization of rabbinic STANDARDS FOR MEMBERSHIP leadership within local communities. In addition,
the Rabbinic Cabinet endeavors to apprise the Members of the Rabbinic Cabinet should:
lay leadership of the concerns of the rabbinate, 1. Be involved in local Federation and campaign activities, support federation work and engage infuse Jewish values and content into the work of synagogues in the community campaign. local federations, and serve Israel and the Jewish 2. Pledge a minimum of $1000. Rabbis who were people with rabbinical involvement and support. ordained less than five years ago should pledge at least $500.
3. Participate in JFNA missions.
4. Attend the Annual Meeting of the Rabbinic Cabinet and/or regional conferences and special meetings.
The Orchard Spring 2013 - Nissan 5773 3 A PASSOVER PRAYER
Areyvut – Jewish Mutual Responsibility (to be read following the singing of Dayenu)
All of Israel is responsible for one another. - Talmud, Shavuot 39a
Our story this night tells of the transformative The Israeli Jew and the Iraqi Jew, the moment when we, a cohort of cousins, united as a Argentinean Jew and the American Jew, the people, forever linked in faith and in fate. We walked traditional Jew and the unconventional Jew, as one between the birthing waters of the Sea to be reconstituted as Am Yisrael— the people of Israel. The Russian grandparent and the Ethiopian child, those of substance and those on subsistence. So we sing Dayeynu – had God only done that and no more, it would have been enough. We sit as one at this Seder, differences dissolving in common history and hope and in deepened Together at Sinai we stood and received Torah, the awareness of our mutual dependency. gift of God’s love. As women and men now free, we entered into a covenant of mutual obligation and We are so much stronger as a family than as individuals. inter-dependence, responsible to the Holy One and to each other. For our collective responsibility - at home, in Israel and around the world - is monumental Dayenu – had God only done that and no more, and compelling. it would have been enough. All Israel is responsible, one to the other. That covenant binds us still, transcending time and place, linking each Jew to every Jew. Kol Yisrael areyvim zeh bazeh.
Each one, dependent on all. And for this, there is no Dayenu. There can be no “enough.” Kol Yisrael areyvim zeh bazeh. We are responsible for each other. We are For as much as we do, there is more to be done. responsible to each other.
Seated here, as well as at seder tables around the world, are loved ones and friends, shoulder to shoulder with all who sing the same songs of by Rabbi Donald B. Rossoff, salvation and praise, family all. Chair, Rabbinic Cabinet of MetroWest NJ
The Orchard Spring 2013 - Nissan 5773 4 PASSOVER GREETINGS FROM JFNA CHAIR OF THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES AND PRESIDENT & CEO
While the story of Passover is often viewed in the lens of the Exodus, it is equally important to focus on the story of Sinai: the giving of the Ten Commandments and the formal commitment of a strong Jewish People and G-d. As was said by the great Jewish thinker Rabbi David Hartman, z”l, we, as Jews, are defined by G-d and theTorah, not by the Pharaoh. Rabbi Hartman reminded us that Halakhah (Jewish law) teaches that Jews are not permitted to go back to Egypt. We are a forward-thinking people filled with strength and joy, and we have a commitment to being a light unto the nations.
As we sit down for our Passover Seders this year, we should do so with this perspective. Generations after leaving Egypt, we have become a Jewish People who contribute much to the world, and we are all anchored by our connection to and love for the land of Israel.
The North American Jewish community remains united in our mission to support and defend Israel and to nurture and sustain the Jewish People across the globe. Through the work of Jewish Federations and our partner agencies, The Jewish Agency for Israel, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, World ORT and others, we bring food to the hungry, shelter to the cold, and help the most vulnerable in our communities, not only in Israel but in more than 70 countries around the world.
This November, we will convene in Jerusalem for The Jewish Federations of North America’s 2013 General Assembly, where we will confront the most pressing issues and address the greatest opportunities facing the Jewish community at home and abroad. A General Assembly in Israel happens just every five years, and it is an experience not to be missed. It is a place where ideas are generated, problems are solved, and innovations are born. It is an opportunity for us to celebrate our homeland, and to revel in how far we have come as a Jewish nation.
The General Assembly in Israel will enable us to continue the great narrative of Passover, the story that began so long ago in Egypt, and culminated on Mount Sinai. As we celebrate and retell our familiar history, let us remember that our narrative is still unfinished. In fact, the greatest parts of this story may lie in our future, when all who are hungry are fed, when all who are cold are clothed, when all who are seeking community find comfort in the Jewish home. eW look forward to that day.
We conclude every Seder with, “Next year in Jerusalem.” This Passover, let’s say, “This November in Jerusalem.”
Chag Pesach Sameyach,
Michael Siegal Jerry Silverman Chair of the Board of Trustees President & CEO The Jewish Federations of North America The Jewish Federations of North America
The Orchard Spring 2013 - Nissan 5773 5 PASSOVER GREETING FROM THE CHAIR OF THE RABBINIC CABINET RABBI STUART WEINBLATT
A number of articles and sermons in this issue discuss the meaning of the holiday of Passover, a holiday which is the ultimate celebration of freedom. The message of liberation from tyranny has inspired many people throughout history, both Jews and non-Jews alike. In our lifetime, it served as a beacon of hope to Jews behind the Iron Curtain. Through the Rabbinic Cabinet, families across North America spoke of the “Matzah of Hope” at their seders.
On the recent Rabbinic Cabinet mission to Kiev and Israel, we had the chance to see firsthand the impact and power of this message and the inspiration of our tradition. The mission had so many highlights it is difficult to describe them all or to convey in a few words how meaningful an experience we had.
I would like to share just one story from our trip that was especially poignant and significant about former Soviet refusenik Yosef Begun who joined us for Shabbat dinner in Jerusalem.
He told the delegation of rabbis that the letters sent to him and other prisoners of Zion meant a great deal. It brought them hope and information about the outside world. They knew they were not alone and gave them confidence that eventually they would win their battle to be free. Begun explained that piles of letters would often be delivered to them, and that the Soviets were especially annoyed by those that required a return receipt. As a result, the Soviet regime knew that there were others who cared about them and were monitoring the government’s actions. This further sustained the hope of the refuseniks and allowed them not to succumb to despair.
He regaled us with stories about his time in the Soviet Gulag as a refusenik. At one point during dinner one of the rabbis asked how he knew about Judaism since the teaching of Judaism was illegal for so long and the communist regime had repressed all Jewish sources and resources. He looked at us and said, “Because of you.” He explained that the American Jews and rabbis who came and taught and brought materials had truly helped to teach and spread Judaism and kept it alive.
His words, as well as our journey, reaffirmed the importance of our work to strengthen and support Clal Yisrael and how our efforts help to keep the flame of Judaism alive.
Hag Sameach.
The Orchard Spring 2013 - Nissan 5773 6 PASSOVER GREETING FROM THE DIRECTOR OF THE RABBINIC CABINET RABBI GERALD I. WEIDER
We are all aware of the underlying themes of Pesach, especially that this is the time to celebrate “Yetziat Mitzrayim” our going out from slavery into freedom. In that respect, we can appreciate that this emergence into freedom takes many forms as it emerges in different places. This idea was exemplified for the Rabbinic Cabinet this past February as 32 of us visited Kiev and Israel to see how the Federation system, through the JDC and JAFI, nurtured the Jews of the FSU to go out from their slavery and reclaim their Jewishness as free people. (I urge you to read through the section of this Orchard where you will find writings and reflections from our Rabbinic Cabinet Mission to Kiev/Israel.)
Both in Eretz Yisrael and in the Ukraine, individual Jews are emerging to reclaim their lost Jewish lives through the encouragement and help of JDC and JAFI staff workers. They are regaining and recreating their heritage, their history, and their communal institutions. As such, Jewish life is once again planting roots in Kiev and growing stronger in Eretz Yisrael through the lives of those Jews of the FSU who either went on aliyah or chose to stay behind in Kiev.
Within our JFNA world, our constituent agencies will continue to nurture those special Jewish communities so that they can go from strength unto strength once again, but this time in freedom and without coercion. Because of our support and encouragement, JDC and JFAI will be there if, and when, they are needed. There can be no doubt that our rabbinic contributions to our local federations and directly to JFNA, will ensure a safety net for any and all Jewish populations that might be endangered as the world changes.
JFNA constituent agencies are ready to respond because of Rabbinic leadership and Rabbinic support. I urge you to please tell your congregants about the important work of Federation and how they are ready to help Jews all over the world at this Passover season.
Thank you for your support of the Rabbinic Cabinet of JFNA and thank you for ensuring that Passover can be celebrated by all Jews wherever they might live.
The Orchard Spring 2013 - Nissan 5773 7 RABBINIC CABINET MISSION TO KIEV AND ISRAEL FEBRUARY 4-12, 2013
FULFILLING THE PROMISE TO SOVIET JEWRY
On February 4th a group of 32 rabbis gathered at JFK International airport for the start of their historic mission to Kiev and Israel. The focus of this mission was to witness how the federation system has kept its promise to save Soviet Jewry through aliyah to Israel, through integration in the United States and through the rebirth of Jewish life in Kiev.
The following articles are reflections by those who participated in the mission on their experiences both in Kiev and in Israel. The visits to JDC and JAFI sites in both countries provided mission participants with a direct insight into how their tzedakah contributions to their local federations were being used to enhance Jewish life around the world.
We wish you a sweet and kosher Pesach
Rabbi Gerald I. Weider Director of the Rabbinic Cabinet of JFNA
The Orchard Spring 2013 - Nissan 5773 8 THE MIRACLE OF JEWISH LIFE IN KIEV Rabbi Stuart Weinblatt
To be a rabbi is to be a teacher, a messenger, a conveyer of truth, a conduit of our heritage, a teller of stories. Having just returned from leading the mission of the Rabbinic Cabinet of Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA) to Kiev and Israel I want to do all this and thereby fulfill another part of what it means to be a rabbi – to touch and inspire people so they will know and appreciate how blessed we are to be part of such a unique people, a people whose hallmark is one of caring and of taking care of each other.
First a few words of background about the sponsors of our trip. The Rabbinic Cabinet which I am privileged to chair is an organization of close to 1,000 North American rabbis from all movements. We work with our local and national Federations to support the philanthropic work of the Jewish community. Part of the work of Federation is to help Jews overseas keep the spark of Judaism alive and to sustain elderly impoverished Jews and children in need. This is done primarily by two organizations.
Established in 1914 and active in more than 70 countries, the Joint Distribution Committee, also known as JDC, or just “The Joint” provides aid to Jews and Jewish communities around the world through a network of social and community assistance programs, as well as contributing millions of dollars in disaster relief to non-Jewish communities. The other organization, The Jewish Agency for Israel, known as JAFI or the Sachnoot, is responsible for immigration and absorption of Jews to Israel and fosters and promotes Jewish identity around the world.
Our mission allowed us to see first-hand what the work we do on behalf of our fellow Jews through these two extraordinary networks. We saw and were proud of how our contributions to the Federation annual campaign literally perform miracles by prolonging and sustaining life.
Our first stop in Kiev, Ukraine was to the outdoor Soviet war memorial, consisting of large imposing sculptures and statues on a hillside to commemorate the tremendous loss of life in World War II. It has a statue larger than the famous statue of Jesus the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro. Looking at the harsh faces and jagged lines of the images, one can feel the rigidity and weight of the oppression, the tremendous loss of life and suffering these people must have endured in the 20th century.
We should never forget the role we Jews played in bringing down the Iron Curtain of the Soviet communist regime. As I pointed out in a meeting with the Minister of Justice it was the activism of Soviet Jews yearning to be free, asking to be reunited with their people in Israel that led to the downfall of the USSR, and paved the way for Ukraine to become an independent nation.
In the 1980’s and ‘90’s over one million Jews left the Soviet Union and came to Israel, transforming the country in many ways. As one person told us, just about every Israeli startup consists of one native Israeli who is the salesman, and one guy from Russia who is the computer engineer who designs the program. More about what happened in Israel in upcoming weeks.
The first part of our mission focused on what happened to those who stayed behind and their children, the individuals and the offspring of those who could not, or did not make aliyah. Twenty five years ago we thought those who remained and who for whatever reason had chosen not to emigrate were lost to the Jewish world. But, just as I found last year in Budapest, young Jews are discovering their Jewish connections and are interested in seeking a path back to Judaism. It seems they are not yet ready to allow the death knell of the Jewish people to be proclaimed. It is hard to describe or imagine, but they are moved by being Jewish and hunger to affiliate and participate in Jewish life.
The Orchard Spring 2013 - Nissan 5773 9 A girl we met named Alena was raised by her mother after the divorce of her parents. She remembers that when she was 8 years old, she once joined some friends in taunting an old man and calling him a Zhid, a derogatory name for Jew. When her mother heard her, she slapped her, without explaining why she was so upset by her behavior. Years later, a Jewish friend invited her to attend a Hillel activity -- a scavenger hunt for places related to Jewish history. Alena saw it as a purely social event and went along. When she told her mother how much she enjoyed it, her mother said to her, “I guess it’s in your blood,” and proceeded to reveal for the first time to Alena that her father who had since passed away, had been Jewish. Alena started to attend programs sponsored by the Joint and the Jewish Agency. She now works for Hesed, a JDC social service agency in Kiev, where she escorted our group and shed tears with us at the memorial service we conducted at Babi Yar.
Hesed, as in deeds of mercy, of loving-kindness is the name of an elaborate program that provides care for elderly Jews scattered throughout the FSU. We visited a few of the individuals who receive assistance. Along with two colleagues I climbed 6 flights of steps to the top floor to visit a woman confined to a bed.The government provides some minimal assistance, to this woman, Ninel Dreizina. Her son and daughter both died tragically, and her husband left her. She is truly alone -- but she is not alone and is not abandoned. Due to the amazing work of Hesed, she receives 12 hours of home care, extra funds for medical expenses, and a food card to supplement the little she has to live on. Altogether, the rabbis in our group visited about 20 different locations of Jews who are helped by the Joint. In many cases what they receive is a lifeline, keeping them alive.
Even one who knows the Jewish commandment to care for others could be forgiven if you were to ask, why, why bother, why do we do this?
Our work helps to both sustain Jews and Judaism.
This was illustrated in a story told to us by Asher Ostrin, who directs the Joint’s programs in the FSU. He told us about an elderly gentleman he was visiting, who proudly brandished his Soviet medals. He had little or no connection or interest in anything Jewish. Before leaving the apartment Asher asked the gentleman to tell him about one of his medals. After a while, he pointed to one, and said somewhat matter of factly, that it was the one he got for participating in the liberation of Auschwitz. A short while later the daughter and granddaughter of this man who has only a minimal, tangential connection to his Jewish roots came in to visit. It turns out the daughter works for Hesed, and her daughter attends a Jewish nursery school run by the Joint. The granddaughter proudly entered singing a Hebrew children’s song for her grandfather. As Asher explained, we were witnessing “the largest effort to reclaim Jews for the Jewish people on a scale unprecedented in Jewish history.”
One night we played our small part when we fanned out in 10 vans in groups of 3 to teach in 10 different locations throughout Kiev. In the conservative synagogue, along with three other colleagues, I taught over 30 people who came to learn more about Conservative Judaism. In addition to visiting projects of the Joint, such as Hesed, Bayit Ham (A Warm Home) and other programs we went to programs sponsored by the Jewish Agency where the Jewish identity of youth and seniors was being nurtured in classes on Hebrew, Jewish history, and holidays. One center alone serves 10,000 with daily classes and programs.
In this week’s Torah portion, Parashat Terumah presents a detailed description of the items built for Israel’s first sanctuary. It describes cherubim above the ark which are part animal and part human, with wings, yet with faces of children. The Torah says: “The wings extend upward and their faces are toward each other.” From this my colleague, Rabbi Steve Lindeman notes, Itturey
Torah teaches that there is a reason for this juxtaposition. As we strive to reach upward toward God, we should never lose sight of our fellow human beings, for when we come face to face with each other, see and help one another, we are drawn upward towards God.
Rabbi Stuart Weinblatt Chairman, Rabbinic Cabinet Jewish Federations of North America Congregation B’nai Tzedek Potomac, MD
The Orchard Spring 2013 - Nissan 5773 10 RABBI MISHA ZINKOW
I was not prepared for what I would encounter on the cabinet mission to Kiev and Israel. Of course I reviewed the itinerary before leaving, and naturally I did my background reading on the history of the Jews of Ukraine, WWII, the Communist regime and so forth. But in retrospect, it was like reading the table of contents of a book, and thinking you get the message. This was not a sightseeing trip, not a tour, not a vacation. This was a journey into my own past, and our collective history, as well as a harbinger of our destiny as a people. With each stage of the mission, it struck me that I was going deeper and deeper into my own story, and the heroic narrative of the Jewish people, and I was growing more and more attached to the mission as the emotions came in waves. While no one or two experiences were life-changing there was a cumulative impact on me.
Let me take you with me as I went from tourist to traveler to pilgrim over the course of a few days. After landing in Kiev, we went to a hilltop overlooking the city of some 3-4 million people on which are huge, bold, sculptures along a pathway on the hill that tell its story, from its beginnings through the Soviet era and into independence about twenty years ago. The history hilltop was the first touristy thing to do, what every group does upon arrival to Kiev, and it was the last touristy thing we did. Every stop and every step after that was a link in an emerging sequence of the heroic Jewish story of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.
One hundred years ago, Kiev was one of the most important centers of Jewish culture in Eastern Europe. And despite two world wars, famine, and the Soviet oppression of Jews, today there are still about 80,000 Jews in Kiev, and the community is experiencing a revival, literally from the dead, with the help of the Jewish community of North America and around the world. The Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, which serves distressed Jewish populations all over the world, has a significant presence in Kiev, and is doing remarkable things to reclaim Jews for the Jewish people and to help revive the once decimated Jewish community. One illustration: we broke into small groups to visit with elderly Jews who are clients of the JDC’s Hesed program, a kind of Jewish Family Service operation. My little group went to the apartment of Tuba, a 68 year-old Jewish Ukrainian woman. In Ukraine, the average life expectancy of a man is 58, and the women live on average for 10-15 years longer. So there are a lot of Ukrainian widows. Tuba has been a widow for a long time and in addition to losing her husband, she also experienced the death of both of her sons at young ages. Tuba is not well, looks 90 years old, and has not left her 4th story walk-up apartment in almost two years. The government provides her with two hours of home care a week. Two hours a week. But Tuba is Jewish, and it is a core value of our people to care of one another. The Hesed organization transforms that lofty spiritual value into more than mere words – it provides services to thousands of elderly and impoverished Jews in Ukraine and many other places in the former Soviet Union. We saw many of Hesed’s projects, each one a miracle of life- and soul-sustaining proportions, and with each encounter, I felt my tears of pride getting closer and closer to the surface. Hesed provides Tuba with a homecare aide 5 hours every day of the week. She is literally Tuba’s lifeline. She is an angel of mercy for the Jewish people. Tuba sat and talked with us, and we chanted for her a prayer of healing. And she cried tears of gratitude, if not of joy, because her life as a Jew in that country has been anything but joyful.
Fast-forward just a few days to Israel. The flight to Israel from Kiev is about 2 ½ hours, nothing. But the journey of contrast from Ukraine to the modern State of Israel is like time-traveling from the 19th century to the 21st. Imagine being in a dark, crowded, damp closet full of demons and skeletons lurking everywhere, and then suddenly emerging into the warm, embracing, open radiance of the sun, where green pastures and blue sky surround you. That’s the trip from Kiev to Tel Aviv. But the remarkable thing about the journey is that the faces of the Jews we met and left behind in Kiev reappear everywhere in Israel, now Hebrew-speaking immigrants making meaningful contributions to their new country.
The Orchard Spring 2013 - Nissan 5773 11 In the 1990s, thousands of Jewish physicians made aliyah when the FSU broke up and Jews could leave; today, a significant number of them are reaching retirement age, which is creating a shortage of Israeli doctors. JAFI recently encouraged and facilitated the aliyah of 40 young immigrant doctors from the FSU, and created a program to fast- track their integration into Israel’s medical system. Many of them only learned as adults that they were Jews, but when they discover their roots, they want to join their people’s national story in the State of Israel. These are surgeons and internists, urologists and cardiologists, and we watched them sitting in a classroom learning basic Hebrew, on their way to replenishing hospitals and clinics as Israeli Russian and Hebrew-speaking doctors. This is a story that can only be described as amazing.
I have visited many absorption centers in the last 30 years, but this time was different. Having been in Kiev in the preceding days, I felt like I had in a few days’ time, traveled along the entire long arc of the Jewish people from before the Holocaust, through the Soviet era, and into the freedom and security our people enjoys in the State of Israel. On the morning of our first full day in Kiev, the JDC’s representative, Asher Ostrin said these words: We are reclaiming Jews for the Jewish community.” It’s true in Kiev, but it is so much of a deeper truth in the State of Israel, where those reclaimed Jews have climbed out of the graves of Europe and onto the stage of Jewish history. They no longer watch as an audience. They are the actors. And I must say that I cannot be more proud to be a Jew than to live in these miraculous times of rebirth, of renaissance and of renewal.
Rabbi Misha Zinkow Temple Israel Columbus, Ohio
The Orchard Spring 2013 - Nissan 5773 12 RABBI ALVIN BERKUN
Recently, I participated in a Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA) Rabbinic Cabinet mission to Kiev and Israel. Its purpose was to better our understanding of the work of the Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and the Jewish Agency with the Jews of the FSU during the last quarter century. Currently, 80,000 Jews remain in the Ukraine while many more have migrated to Israel and North America. The work of both agencies has been remarkable. They have helped Jews explore their Jewish identity, (which was often unknown until their teen years), and offer real life sustaining aid to thousands.
In this op-ed piece I want to focus on a different aspect of our trip. I was actually successful in discovering a third cousin living in Kiev. Had my parents not left in the early twenties, I might have been a client of the extraordinary Hesed program of the Joint. Hesed maintains the well-being of thousands of our people still remaining there. My 36 year old cousin made aliyah with her parents and grandparents. In her thirties she met another Kiev native in Israel who had been studying in the Yeshiva world in Israel. Yet when they dealt with the Rabbanut to get married religiously, he could not present proof of his Jewish identity that would be satisfactory to the ultra-Orthodox establishment. They were married civilly in Kiev which is where they now live Jewish lives, because this was denied to them in Israel.
Another case: we also visited an Absorption Center in Ashdod that was created to address the physician shortage currently occurring in Israel. It is hard to believe. We met with some 30 young FSU physicians who were being taught medical terms in Hebrew and were being helped to become acclimated to life in Israel, in order to function as Israeli MDs. Impressive and amazing!
Suddenly, in tears, one of the young women spoke. She said, “I have never before been able to address 32 Rabbis before. I need to tell you that the demeaning process I was made to endure these last several years was awful! I was failed by the rabbinate three times over three years before the Rabbis finally passed me. I am now officially Jewish but my classmates are still suffering from their own horrible experiences.” This was severely troubling and painful to hear.
Lastly, I was given the honor of introducing Natan Sharansky, Chair of the Jewish Agency, recently charged by the Prime Minister to resolve the plight of the Women of the Wall. These women have been trying to pray at the Wall wearing Tallitot and some with Tfillin, every Rosh Hodesh for the last 24 years. When I presented our group to Sharansky, I indicated that seated before him were Rabbis of every movement, but regrettably two rabbis were not with us. They had just been detained at the Wall by the police as they were leaving the Wall. Sharansky was very surprised. He told us that the day before he had met with the Police Captain and requested that only women police deal with the Women of the Wall. He had understood that there would be no arrests while he is reviewing the situation.
There are currently 300,000 immigrants from the FSU currently living in Israel, speaking Hebrew, living according to the Jewish calendar, and risking their lives by serving in the IDF. They cannot be married or buried in the Jewish state. They would like to be converted but last year the Chief Rabbinate converted only 2,000.
Over fifty years ago, I spent a remarkable year in Israel studying at the Hebrew University. I recall thinking that, God willing, one day there will be peace on the borders. At the same time, I was frightened to think of the dissension that would erupt between the religious and non-religious within those borders.
While a new government is being put together, I would urge those who see the current power in the hands of the ultra- Orthodox as untenable to make their voices heard, and to make their position known.
If not now, when?
Rabbi Alvin Berkun Pittsburgh, PA
The Orchard Spring 2013 - Nissan 5773 13 RABBI ALAN LAVIN
We know that this Passover is different from others because it comes so early in the year. While it is usually observed in April, this year it comes in March. However, a more important significance for its observance this year is that we commemorate the twenty-fifth anniversary of the famous “march on ashington”W to highlight the plight of Soviet Jewry and to join in with our congress to demand from the Russian Kremlin, “ Let my people go!” echoing the very words of Moses to Pharoah so many centuries before.
As a way of observing the significance of this year, the Jewish Federation of North America invited me and thirty-one other rabbis to participate in a mission to Ukraine and Israel. While in Kiev we saw with our own eyes the work our federation has been accomplishing over the years since the fall of the Soviet Union in rebuilding the life of hundreds of thousands of Jews who remain there. They do this by putting our U.J.A. Dollars to work by providing meals for the elderly, “warm houses” for them to meet and socialize as Jews, Jewish nurseries and preschools, and aid to rebuild synagogues and youth programs, all designed to reignite a Jewish identity in people who were virtually lost to us during the Communist era.
Both in Ukraine and in Israel we witnessed a Zionist spirit that continues to encourage young Jews to emigrate to the Jewish state and while there, to be assimilated and absorbed into the Israeli society practicing their chosen professions as doctors, engineers, and musicians as part of the Jewish people. Just one institution we visited was an absorption center for Russian doctors who are learning Hebrew and medicine in order to pass their medical boards and be certified in Israel to begin practicing.
All of this doesn’t come easy. We had important discussions with Anotoly Sharansky, the famous refusnik and now the head of the Jewish Agency, Yosef Begun, another famous refusnik, as well as regular Russian émigrés who tell us of their difficulties, particularly in being accepted as Jews under the “Law of Return.” Nevertheless, we all felt that there is definitely developing a true political will for all Jews to work together to fully integrate them into Israeli life.
While in Kiev, we observed a memorial service at Babi Yar, the infamous ravine right in the city itself, where seventy years ago, the Nazis rounded up more than thirty thousand Jews and shot them in cold blood, burying them there in mass graves. Not only for the sake of those who were murdered by the pharoes of our time, but rather for the sake of the future of our people everywhere, it is my hope that you attend our coming U.J.A. breakfast and give to this organization which is truly doing God’s work in saving Jews, both physically and spiritually, and through its agencies in Europe and Israel, allowing our people to fully experience Passover by relaying it’s message of freedom to all subsequent generations.
Wishing you and yours a very happy and kosher Pesach.
Rabbi Dr. Alan F. Lavin Temple Hillel of North Woodmere Woodmere, NY
The Orchard Spring 2013 - Nissan 5773 14 BUILDING THE MISHKAN IN OUR OWN DAYS Rabbi Ron Aigen
Reliving a revelatory moment is always a challenge. How do we hold on to, or convey to others, those extraordinary moments of insight, emotionally laden experiences when we are transported to an elevated state of mind, or sense that we have encountered a deeper, abiding truth? Our sages tell us that the purpose of building the Mishkan, the portable ark that the Israelites carried with them through their wilderness wanderings, was to create a space in which they could re- experience the Sinai moment. “Let them build me a Sanctuary that I might dwell among them.”
How did building the Mishkan that we read about in this week’s Torah portion accomplish this task of holding on to the ineffable experience? One of the key verbs used in describing this construction effort is hibarta, “You shall connect.” By making connections with others, relating to them as friends, haverim, we can come to experience something of the Divine. One of the most basic objects employed in the construction of the Mishkan, the planks of acacia wood, kerashim (K-R-SH) also hints at this transcendent act of making connections. The Degel Mahaneh Ephraim teaches that the plank signifies a human being, (adam) the one who make connections, kesher, (K-SH-R) - “the one who connects all the worlds, unifying one with the other.” Were we to connect with mindlessness, things that are finite and time-bound, this would be to connect with falsehood, sheker (SH-K-R). Our goal ought to be to connect with eternal truths, with spiritual goals that are timeless.
That challenge of retaining and transmitting an ineffable experience is what I have been grappling with since I returned from a truly extraordinary journey to Kiev, Ukraine and Israel. Together with 31 other rabbis from across North America, we visited under the auspices of the Jewish Federations of North America the projects that the Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) and the Jewish Agency for Israel (JAFI) are carrying out to support the welfare, social and educational needs of Jews in Kiev and Israel.
There are so many stories: the rediscovery of Jewish identities by this generation whose grandparents hid it from them due to their experiences under the Nazis and the Communists; the life-saving work of the JDC and JAFI who translate our Federation dollars into the caring work of the Hesed House or the promotion of Jewish cultural rebirth through the Beiteinu center; the moving memorial ceremony held at Babi Yar, where over 100,000 Jews were murdered in 1941, or the equally moving Shabbat dinner in Jerusalem with Yosef Begun, one of the heroes of the Soviet Jewry Movement.
The main message that came through in these and the many other experiences of this powerful mission can be summed up in one word: peoplehood. Again and again I felt a vital connection with my people. It came with a sense of pride and optimism when we spontaneously sang Am Yisrael Hai, “the People of Israel lives” as a tribute to the Jews who died at Babi Yar, that their deaths have been redeemed by the new life that flourishes in Kiev today. And once again when we sang those words in a more joyous, triumphant affirmation together withYosef Begun, I felt the powerful truth of Am Yisrael Hai.
In those connections that we shared with the Jews of Kiev and Israel, and with the work of JDC and JAFI, I experienced the Mishkan being rebuilt in our own day. It is that sense of connection to the life of Am Israel, the eternal people, that gives me renewed hope and inspiration that will fuel all my future efforts on behalf of Klal Yisrael.
Rabbi Ron Aigen Congregation Dorshei Emet Montreal, Canada
The Orchard Spring 2013 - Nissan 5773 15 RABBI JOSHUA Z. GRUENBERG
Today was a meaningful day. Yesterday was largely a travel day, but today we immersed ourselves in the Ukrainian Jewish community. Our day started with two talks from staff of the JDC which is the Joint Distribution Committee. Amongst other things, the JDC basically insures that Jews around the world who are in need of serious help will receive the services they need. Their representative Asher Ostrin explained to us that JDC reclaims Jewish lives for the Jewish people. What an incredible statement. Asher showed us the great things the JDC is doing as they are changing the course of Jewish history by saving all of these Jews primarily from the former Soviet Union.
Our first visit was to the apartment of Tuba a 68 year-old Jewish Ukrainian woman. One of the realities of life in Ukraine is the average life expectancy of a Ukrainian man is 58. The women live on average for 10-15 years. This creates a lot of Ukrainian widows. Tuba has been a widow for a long time and in addition to losing her husband she also experienced the death of both of her sons who both died tragically at young ages. Tuba is not well and has not left her apartment in almost two years. The government provides her with two hours of home care a week. If this was her standard of care she would have died long ago.
Enter JDC. Through their Hessed organization they are providing services to thousands of Jews in need in Ukraine and many other places in the former Soviet Union. We saw many of their projects today. Hessed pays for an aide to come to Tuba’s apartment seven days a week for five hours. She does everything for Tuba and basically is keeping her alive. Without the work of the JDC Tuba would be dead. She sat and talked with us, and we shared a tear as we said a prayer for healing. She lives in horrid conditions and we as Jews have a responsibility to help her.
After visiting with Tuba we went to the Hessed building. There they have established a JFS like operation. We played with young Jewish children as they learned songs for Purim, and made masks for their celebration. I actually sat at the art table with a 6 year old girl who could not sit still. Was like being with Kayla. These Children are getting what many of their parents and grandparents didn’t, a Jewish upbringing. They will grow up proud to be Jewish and unafraid to practice publicly. Then we saw two senior groups. One is a day club where they sing Hebrew songs and learn to speak Hebrew, and another which is a once a month club where seniors gather to socialize.
Our afternoon began with a visit to an apartment and experience with the JDC program warm home. This program brings Jewish seniors together once a week in a case worker’s apartment for food and socializing. Many of these people have met their closest friends through the program, and have discovered long lost friends and their joy of being Jewish.
Many younger Jews in the Ukraine discovered that they were Jewish only once they were teen-agers. Driven by fear of persecution and shame their families only divulged their heritage to them once they felt safe. Now they are discovering their Judaism and very proud and excited to do so. Our last visit today was to the Jewish Agency of Israel building in Kiev. There we met with young Ukrainian Jews who are taking courses and learning to be counselors for the next generations of Ukrainian Jews. They are also traveling to Israel on the Birthright and Masa programs. Many of them are actually deciding to leave Ukraine and make Aliyah to Israel. Tanya, a Ukrainian Jew who found out she was Jewish at 16 told us that the Jewish Agency changed her life. She met her husband on a birthright trip and they plan to make Aliyah together this summer. Our visit to the Sochnut (Jewish Agency) ended by hearing the only Klezmer band in Ukraine, where much of this music originated many years ago.
We finished our evening with dinner accompanied by the US Ambassador to Ukraine John Tefft. Ambassador Tefft is a great friend of the Ukrainian Jewish community and a great American. He has been in Foreign Service under Democratic and Republican administrations for 42 years. It has been a long and meaningful day. There are so many Jews in need in this area of the world. In ten years the number of Jews in the FSU (former Soviet Union) have decreased from 240,000 to 180,000. Many have left but many have died. JDC is the only organization helping them. We can all find a way to help.
Kol Yisrael Arayveem Zeh Bazeh. All of the people Israel are guarantors for one another. As much as the American Jewish community is need, we are these people’s guarantors and they need us. Laila Tov from Kiev. Good night from Kiev.
L’shalom, Rabbi Joshua Z. Gruenberg Congregation Beth El Yardley, PA
The Orchard Spring 2013 - Nissan 5773 16 RABBI ADAM KLIGFELD
Yesterday I wrote that nothing had happened yet. That this posting will be decidedly non-linear, both because of the ongoing effects of jet-lag (It is now Thursday AM in Kiev and I have slept a total of about 8 hours since waking up Monday morning in NY) and because the experience of the day seemed non-linear itself, jumping around from one historical epoch to another, taking me back to the late 1890’s in one moment, and having me extrapolate forward to thirty years from now in another. Perhaps the most intense time warp I experienced when looking into the wide eyes of a 4 year old child at the Kiev Hesed headquarters, newly-designed paper Purim mask on his head, wondering just how infinitesimally small the breaks would have had to go in a different direction than they did for it to have turned out that a parallel version of me and my family would be here in Kiev (my great-grandfather lived in Makarov, just 40 miles west of here), reliant on the JDC to help me pay my winter heating bills and give my children any semblance of Jewish identity... and this little angelic face would not be here in Kiev, but rather an eager ECC student in Pressman. With Purim approaching, everything here seems topsy-turvy, micro twists of fate changing everything.
A few snapshots. Our escort in the morning home visits to Jewish families getting some version of welfare support from the Hesed infrastructure was Tanya. Her story is a microcosm of all of Jewish Ukraine, it seems. And its full version would require 3 blog posts itself. In brief, she is a mid-30 something mother who is giving her children a strong Jewish education. Nothing out of the ordinary in that - right? Let’s go back in time. She is born here in Kiev. She meets her husband, also a Ukrainian, and they marry assuming that both of them are just generally ethnic Ukrainians with some non-descript Christian heritage to which they pay no attention. But at some point, something begins to rumble in Tanya’s consciousness. The shape of her nose compared to her other peers. Odd clues in her grandmother’s home she never picked up on before. It turns out, those Friday night dinners she had for years with her grandmother with two candles lit at the table were proto-Shabbat dinners, without ritual, description or blessing -- just echoes of a former identity. It turns out that that language her grandmother and mother used to use when they didn’t want her to understand was not an archaic Ukrainian peasant dialect; it was Yiddish. It turns out those lullabies her grandmother sang to her were not just lullabies--they were niggunim, which she had learned as a child back in “Fiddler on the Roof” times. And it turns out her grandmother’s near inability to talk about her own childhood and teenage years stems at least partially from a PTSD reaction. You might have had it too...if you survived Babi Yar, managed to evade the bullets as 100,000 of your community were machine-gunned into a ravine, and fled off into the forest leaving your Jewishness dead among the dead bodies. Tanya discovers all of this in a spasmodic epiphany, which yields the odd, dual reaction of fascination at her own, discovered heritage and concern regarding how she could share it with her husband and/or inculcate it, if she chose to, in her children given whom she chose to marry. And yet...though the details of the story are less clear to me...let’s just say that her husband discovers a nearly identical narrative about his own life. They are both Jewish, matrilineally descended from the Ukrainian version of conversos, not forced underground by Spanish inquisitors, but by an instinct to run from an identity that, to them, seemed to be marked only for death. Tanya had begun to work at the JDC in Kiev before she learned this about herself; the job was good, secretarial work. Now she is a regional manager of Hesed activities and her children and grandchildren, if they stay, will become the typology of the modern Ukrainian Jew.
You hear this story and, even knowing that it multiplies on itself thousands of thousands of times over in this place, your mind still can’t assimilate it, its only seeming reaction being something like, “huh?”
Let me jump ahead a bit, and then I will jump back. Meet Alessandra. And Nikki. They are 17 years old. And bubbly. And impish. And delightful. They look nothing like “us,” and by that I mean that, although we all debunk eugenics as dangerous proto-science, we all can do a pretty good job, using Jewish radar, to identify at least an Ashkenazi facial typology. Neither of these two charming young women have one. But they have energy and charm. And they sputter a heavily accented, and yet utterly passable Hebrew, which far outpaces what mine was at their age, which they have learned from JAFI (Jewish Agency for Israel) programming and leadership training at the “Zion Square” headquarters in Kiev. How did they get there? I hear more of Alessandra’s story than Nikki’s. Her mother is Jewish...but Jewish in the way so many Soviets were in the ‘70s and ‘80’s. Nominally, if at all. Not a gram of yiddishkeit in her, just a faint knowledge that that “yevrei” on her passport made her different than, and thus likely hated by, her classmates. Alessandra’s father is Ukrainian ethnic, born and bred. A non-devout Orthodox Christian. At some point, young Alessandra starts asking questions of her mother about Judaism. Her Jewish mother is uninterested and discouraging. Her Ukrainian father, however, spurs her on, tells her she should go an reclaim a heritage. Now this 17 year old can’t get enough programming at JAFI; she apologizes for her somewhat broken Hebrew and English as she excitedly tells me about this event, or that Klezmer concert, or this Shabbat program, or that gathering, all of which remind me of USY-energy that enveloped me in my teens. As a freshman in local university, all she thinks about is her burgeoning interest in computer science, which she is sure is a ticket to a lucrative career in the States where she can settle down in a vibrant Jewish community and
The Orchard Spring 2013 - Nissan 5773 17 make her life. Perhaps in LA, she says. She has my card. Maybe we’ll see her at some point. Her friend Nikki’s story is less clear to me; her dream is to get involved in local politics for a bit, but ultimately to move to Israel and live a quiet life. It is hard to describe in the two-dimensionality of prose how, when looking at these 21st century Kievites, one literally has to stretch the limits of consciousness to think of these two girls as the vanguard of an Eastern European Jewish future. And they love to hora-dance, as they showed me during the impromptu Klezmer concert we enjoyed together. Klezmer music which, in the words of the clarinetist, is “Klezmer music, filtered through theAmerican experience, and now coming back home, where it was born.” The dancing was Fiddler-esque, except without any Cossacks, and so hopeful and shtetl Anatevka replaced by texting, tweeting and Face booking teenagers thinking it is “so cool” that all of us are rabbis. Now, if I can only get a good online Ukrainian/English translation program, I can understand Alessandra’s and Nikki’s Facebook updates. I think one of them referenced meeting me... but I am not sure!
Let me make explicit what may have been implicit so far, and which Asher Ostrin (the JDC chief for the former Soviet Union countries for 23 years, who just retired from full time work to focus on other projects, who was ordained by JTS before serving a pulpit in Harrisburg, PA, before making aliyah in the ‘80s and starting to work in the Soviet countries, and whose close childhood friend was Edie Lucas, mother of Rabbi Ari Lucas, and whose wedding was performed by Rabbi Alan Lucas--did I say it was a small world? Oh...and whose wife’s father was my father’s teacher and mentor at the University of Cincinnati psychiatric residence program in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s) had shared with us in the beginning of the day as a frame through which to experience that day’s events and nearly all of what is happening Jewishly in the Ukraine. One part of the frame is welfare, Jewish dollars going to support and literally keep alive Jews on the margins, either because of age and illness and poverty, or because of absolute indigence among younger folks with some Jewishness in their blood. This part of Federation’s work here is to keep alive, and to keep connected, and to be involved in programming that nourishes 160,000 elderly Jews and 30,000 impoverished Jewish children who would simply disappear, cold and hungry, into oblivion without this tzedakah. Asher mentioned how we Westerners identify with the scourge of dementia, and the inevitable progression from slight memory loss, to part-time aides, to assisted living, to nursing home, to hospital, hopefully within driving distance of family. Here in the Ukraine, they would look at that narrative and say, “if only...” Here, living in apartment complexes where it looks like the residences and municipal services have yet to be told that Brezhnev died, where Soviet-era living conditions would seem to be extravagant, thousands and thousands of elderly and infirm Jews live on the margins. The incredible network that the JDC has created brings friendly visitors and warm food to the elderly; and provides day care and nursery program to Jewish children; and gathers older Jews for Yiddish clubs and Klezmer music and tastes of their childhood; and provides volunteers to help organize the “Warm Home” project where older Jews gather in one of their homes once a week to sip tea, eat some treats, and talk about Jewish things. We visited one of them. 7 elderly Jewish women and 1 man. He was quiet the whole time. I couldn’t tell whether he could hear or follow what was being said. His eyes seemed to stare out blankly. It turns out, he is over 90. He is a decorated war hero. He comes to this Warm Home program to connect, to remember, to feel a bit less alone. And his eyes were not empty or vacuous. They were quietly tearing up, as his mind wandered back to some memory from the ‘30s he couldn’t quite communicate to us, and he tried to make sense of the notion that we were rabbis, from America, visiting him, reaching out to him, there to support him. It was just too much for him to make sense of. He gave us a smile; I was able to grab a picture or two of him before he turned away, awash in thoughts whose content I can only imagine.
That is frame # 1. And the other frame is the one that looks forward, instead of back. That is building, more than sustaining. That is brimming with optimism and energy and light, rather than the heaviness that saturates the welfare arm of this project. This frame is Alessandra and Nikki, and the simple notion of rebuilding Jewish community, right here in Kiev, with no apologies and no sense of intrinsic limitations. This frame is the one that makes you think that if the doomsday predictions of American Jewish demographics come to fruition, the modern synagogue lurching into obsolescence (God-forbid! But plenty of articles, as you know, are written about that...), then we may be in the oddest of conceptual places, especially when you compare it to the status of the Jewish world 20-30 years ago, in which we can say something like, “....well at least there is the Ukraine!” At least we have Jewish life in Kiev. At least there is light streaming from this once-Jewishly-occluded part of the world. At least...
So as the sun begins to rise on a Ukrainian Thursday that will take us to Babi Yar, have us teach parsha to some local Jewish students, and whose late evening visit to a jazz club and vodka bar may very well just be the proper antidote to jet leg, I say to you “boker tov,” and that I am so glad I was introduced to, and am able to introduce to you, Tanya...and Alessandra and Nikki... and the war veteran...and the 4 year old with the Purim mask...and the incredible narratives that are unfolding every minute on this journey.
Adam Kligfeld Temple Beth Am Los Angeles, CA
The Orchard Spring 2013 - Nissan 5773 18 THOUGHTS FROM BABI YAR Rabbi Michael Stanger
It is night time here and I have to get to bed soon as we have 6am davening and then prepare for the last leg of our journey to Israel. We were at Babi Yar this morning, a mass gravesite where hundreds of thousands of people (most of them Jews) were murdered by the Nazis during the War. We lit candles, sang somber Hebrew songs and encouraged by our Ukrainian guides, tossed Red carnations (a Russian custom) into the snowy Ravine below. The red flowers showed in stark contrast to the white snow and of course made me visualize all the blood spilled there. Our main guide, a young woman named Anja wept profusely as she showed us a copy of the original orders in Russian for the Jews to appear in that valley by order of the Nazis back in 1941. I asked her later on in the bus ride back if she were perhaps Jewish? She was not, although she was currently studying Judaism and had a great, great grandfather by the name Moses who hailed from a Jewish town, so she always wondered if she herself had Jewish blood. She shared with us that her own father had gone to Babi Yar that day to say farewell to his Jewish neighbors, assuming they would be relocated but then fled when he heard the first shots fired and realized too late what was happening.
Another of our guides and translators was a young woman named Elona, she told me that her father was Jewish and had abandoned the family when she was little but that it was her own gentile mother who encouraged her interest and study of Judaism. I am including her picture from the ceremony below. An Israeli rep from the JDC, Amir Ben Zvi shared with us at dinner that he had never seen these two, beautiful young women so visibly shaken like this before, and then added that when Shimon Peres had recently visited the Ukraine and was asked the question, after meeting with many young Jews and those descended from Jews, what truly defines a Jew he asserted that to him Judaism is not defined by the Nazis or the Law of Return meaning one Jewish grandparent means you are Jewish, but by whether or not YOUR grandchildren will be Jewish.
Something to contemplate as we all head into our individual and collective futures.
Rabbi Michael Stanger Old Westbury Hebrew Congregation Old Westbury, NY
The Orchard Spring 2013 - Nissan 5773 19 ON BEING ATTAINED AT THE KOTEL ON ROSH CHODESH ADAR Rabbi Robyn Fryer Bodzin
The Talmud teaches “When the month of Adar arrives we should increase our joy.” Even though I spent much of the morning of Rosh Chodesh Adar being detained by the Israeli police, my joy of being part of the Jewish people increased tenfold by the experience.
It was either coincidence or bashert that I was in Jerusalem for Rosh Chodesh Adar, and thus able to support and join Women of the Wall (WOTW) for minyan. My colleague, Rabbi Debra Cantor of Connecticut, along with many male rabbinic supporters, awoke early and flocked to the Old City. We had all heard of Women of the Wall, but had never davened with them before.
At 7 am, I joined hundreds of women as we opened our prayer books and began with the opening blessings. Behind us and beside us, on the other side of the mechitza, were a combination of male supporters and photographers.
After a melodious Hallel, we left the Kotel en masse to Robinson’s Arch to begin the Torah service, as is the custom of WOTW. I was very nervous as we sang and walked over, because I was supposed to read the fourth aliyah. However, that never happened because as soon as I exited the metal detector at the Kotel plaza, a police officer asked for my identity papers. I explained I had a Canadian passport and then she asked for that. When I asked her why, I did not receive an answer. It was at that moment that I realized I might not actually be able to attend my back-to-back meetings as a delegate of the JFNA Rabbinic Cabinet anymore.
Nine other women joined me at a satellite police station in the Old City. We stood in a courtyard and introduced ourselves to one another. While some of the women had been detained before, there did not seem to be a clear reason as to why others were chosen. David Barhoum, the WOTW lawyer who spent some time with us could not even figure out why we were detained.
Throughout the morning, we were taken into the interrogation room one at a time. While I was asked numerous questions, I also requested that the lovely Druze police officer answer some of my questions as well. It was important to me to know why I was there. He responded to me that my two crimes were that I violated the regulations of holy places and that I behaved in a way that may violate public safety. It might not have been the right thing to do, but I laughed when he said that. How was it that only ten out of hundreds of women were violating public safety? What was going to happen? We were not picketing or demonstrating; we were praying to God. It still makes no sense to me.
I have read many accounts of our situation on Monday morning, and I would like to clarify that we were detained, not arrested. There were no handcuffs involved. We were not placed into a cell. The experience was surreal, not scary. In fact, my only fear was that I would miss my flight which was scheduled for later that night.
After some time, the officers brought us tea and we began to chit chat with them. I asked one of them if he liked to babysit women who don’t actually commit crimes, and he responded that he did it every month. The sense that I got was that these officers go through this processing routine every month, and they too think it is ridiculous. But, they have a job to do.
After some time, we were told that we could be released, as long as we signed a surety document that stated we would not come to the Kotel for 15 days. I signed the document, and then at about noon, we were taken from the satellite police station to a larger one. Once there, we were finger printed and had our pictures taken.And then we were free to go.
When Rabbi Cantor and I rejoined our group, we were lauded as heroes. We did not set out to be detained on Rosh Chodesh, we just went to daven. The response I have received from congregants, former students, colleagues friends and family has been overwhelmingly supportive and positive.
Later that day our group met with residents of The Jewish Agency’s Amigour Subsidized Housing for the Elderly. We were treated to a concert by the Amigour choir, which consists mainly of immigrants from the FSU, many of whom are Shoah survivors. When these lovely singers started to sing “Oseh Shalom” tears started to fall down my face.
The English translation of “Oseh Shalom” is He who makes peace in his high places, he shall make peace upon us and upon all of Israel, and we say amen. I cried out of joy because I know that with God’s help peace will come upon the people Israel and the country Israel. The fervently right wing Orthodox community will lose their power one day. The
The Orchard Spring 2013 - Nissan 5773 20 secular Israeli just society needs to become more aware of the situation. When they join our quest for religious pluralism in the state of Israel, then real change can begin.
Just before my flight home, I was shopping at the Michal Negrin store at the airport with a colleague. Being proud, he told a clerk what had happened to me earlier that day. Her response was, “what, women can’t wear tallitot at the Kotel? How can the government stop a woman from doing that? That is wrong.”
As Rosh Chodesh ended I felt joy because I am full of confidence that change will come, as people are becoming aware, astounded and angry at the status quo, one at a time.
I believe a nation that demands a daughter don an army uniform but arrests her for wearing a tallit has more soul searching to do.
I believe millions of decent fair minded Jews the world over, stand with you and stand against a self-righteous pretend Judaism that would see you arrested for practicing your religion.
I believe Jews who measure their level of religious observance by oppressing others have missed the point.
I believe the Masorti Movement’s role in Judaism is to make this point.
I believe Israel needs to worry when Russia exhibits a greater level of religious tolerance.
I believe a Jewish nation that consumes more bacon than lox and arrests women for praying has some soul searching to do.
I believe a nation that demands a daughter don an army uniform but arrests her for wearing a tallit has more soul searching to do.
I believe Rashi’s daughter wore a tallit when she put on teffilin!
I believe Rebbeinu Tam would have ruled that a woman arrested for wearing a tallit is obligated to make a Shechayanu.
I believe resistance to the egalitarian practice of Judaism is founded not in religious doctrine but rather in Sinat Chinum.
I believe that Moshiach does not tarry because a woman wears a tallit but will tarry because of Sinat Chinum.
Rabbi Robyn Fryer Bodzin Israel Center of Conservative Judaism Queens, NY
The Orchard Spring 2013 - Nissan 5773 21 RABBI ROBYN FYER BODZIN
Friends,
While the sky is blue here in NY, and I can hear Hebrew in the streets, and soon I will run out to get challah and be part of the people doing last minute errands for Shabbat, it sure is not Jerusalem.
Shabbat shalom, Robyn
Parshat Teruma begins:
The Lord spoke to Moshe saying: Tell the Israelite people to bring Me gifts, you shall accept gifts for Me from every person ֹוּבִל ּוּנֶבְּדִי רֶׁשֲא ׁשיִא-לָּכ תֵאֵמ .whose heart so moves him
What touches your hearts?
In the past few months I have shared my thoughts on the horrible storm Sandy and how it affected my heart. The gun violence issue still makes me cringe when I think about all of the people in this country who lost their lives. Those are both global and universal issues.
This morning I want to share a more particular issue that touches my heart, something that is so close to home.
Last week I was reminded that not only do I love the Jewish people, but I learned that the resiliency of the Jewish people can move me to tears, which it did, on a number of occasions.
It was an honor to be invited to participate in the JFNA Rabbinic Cabinet mission to Kiev and Israel. I had a fuzzy idea about what to expect, but what I actually experienced left a deep impression.
You know how we sometimes refer to the great miracle of the Negev blooming in Israel; green fields where there was once desert? Well, I saw blossoming Jewish life that followed the Shoah and the KGB, the Soviet regime and rapid anti- Semitism.
For the most part, the 350-500,000 Jews of Kiev (depending on who you ask) are undergoing a mass Jewish identity learning process. It was not uncommon to hear that someone was 14 when they found out they were Jewish or 17 years old. For many, their first Jewish memory is happening right now, thanks to the JDC and the Jewish Agency for Israel, or one of the other 35 grass roots Jewish organizations that is reaching about 25% of the population.
When we make our pledges to UJA Federation, a lot of our money goes overseas to the JDC, and I always knew that. But it was not until last week that I fully comprehended the power of those dollars. By sharing what I experienced in Kiev and Israel, I hope to paint a picture of the Joint’s effort to reclaim Jews for the Jewish people.
One of our first speakers was Asher Ostrin, a senior JDC official. Under his tenure, JDC established 15 local offices assisted by 380 field workers. The JDC’s budget to provide life-saving support to Jews in the Former Soviet Union expanded from $400,000 in 1991 to $140 million in 2012 during Ostrin’s time as director of JDC’s FSU department. He told us, rather bluntly, that Jewish dollars are supporting and keeping marginal Jews alive.
Programming has been created that nourishes 160,000 elderly Jews and 30,000 impoverished Jewish children who would otherwise simply disappear, cold and hungry, into oblivion without this tzedakah.
Our first real entrée into Jewish life in the Ukraine took place as our group was divided into teams to make home visits. I had the opportunity to meet Lev Shehter. Lev was born in 1915 and he is a miracle and beats all odds, since the average life expectancy is 65 for men. In 1938 Lev was drafted into the army and returned back to Kiev and work in a factory in 1940. Lev was lucky because when World War II started Lev, together with the entire factory, was evacuated to the Novosibirsk region and was there until 1947.
In 1943 Lev married a woman who already had a son. In 1947 Lev and his family returned to Kiev and he joined the staff
The Orchard Spring 2013 - Nissan 5773 22 of a factory specializing in manufacturing aeronautic products. Lev worked there until he retired in 1992. Lev`s wife passed away in 1998 and he now lives alone.
Lev has beautiful, piercing blue eyes and was excited to have five English speaking Rabbis visit him and take pictures with him. He opened the door with a wide smile. His home was clean and on the wall was a beautiful poster that he received for his 95th birthday. The greetings were in Cyrillic, so I could not make it out, but the pictures explained how beloved he was.
His apartment consists of a small foyer for coats, a small kitchen with enough room for a table for 2 and a bedroom/living area that contained his bed, a display case of pictures, teacups, some figurines, and a dresser. We sat in chairs in his room, while he sat on his bed. An interpreter with us delivered a package of food into his kitchen, and we spent some time listening to his story.
There were no visible signs of Jewish life in his compact apartment, but when we discussed the Jewish social welfare program, called Hesed, which is organized by the JDC , his eyes lit up, and he told us that Hesed was his Judaism, his community and his family. He told us that he likes to watch television show about Israel and feels like it is his own family. He said that when he goes to Hesed he feels like he is in Israel. Lev has been a Hesed client since 1996.
At midday we were brought to the actual Hesed center, where some 10,000 Jewish people like Lev are brought at least once a month to socialize, learn and share. They receive a decent and healthy meal, as many of the Jews living in Kiev are at or below the poverty line.
It was explained to us as follows; poverty in Kiev is so real that by the third week of the month, many elderly people have to begin rationing their medicine, their food, and even essential comforts like diapers for incontinence. 50,000 of the poorest Jews in Ukraine depend on JDC’s debit food cards to purchase their basic monthly staples in local supermarkets. Hesed is their life saver.
At this Hesed center, I heard elderly Jewish women sing Yerushalayim shel Zahav, sat with elderly women as they made Purim cards and witness young children putting stickers on Queen Esther crowns.
We were told on more than one occasion that the effort to help these Jews is having a positive but challenging consequence. The care these people receive increases their life expectancy. The longer and healthier their lives are the more long-term assistance they will continue to need. Sadly, the pot is not endless. Present and future concerns for care are real. And, there is also the fact that so many in the community are leaving, not to us in New York, but one very specific place.
Lev is not the only one who loves Israel. Israel is viewed so favorably by the Ukraine, that much of the Ukrainian delegation to the U.N. was purposely absent during the vote to upgrade the Palestinian State to non-member observer status.
Every single Jewish person I met in Kiev had at least one family member who has made aliyah. At the Kiev JAFI complex, I had the chance to meet a group of ten people about to make aliyah. They credited the Jewish Agency for Israel (who has a strong presence) and Birthright among the reasons for their desire to start anew.
Once we arrived to Israel, I had an amazing, spiritual, restful, warm and sunny Shabbat. But then on Sunday our impressive schedule started up again. We witnessed the absorption of FSU Jews into Israel in a plethora of settings.
To me, the most impressive example of absorption was JAFI’s Mifgash program for new immigrant doctors at Bet Canada in Ashdod. In the 1990’s thousands of Jewish physicians made aliyah from the FSU. Today, many of them are reaching retirement, and there is a major shortage of Israeli doctors. JAFI has recently facilitated the aliyah of 40 young immigrant doctors from the FSU and created a new program, in cooperation with the Ministry of Absorption to fast track the doctor’s integration into Israel’s medical system. Our group got to meet them, and hand out Maimonides Prayer for the Doctors, in both Hebrew and their language.
These young doctors receive assistance to prepare for the licensing exams, which they are taking in a few months. They have a four month Ulpan to learn Hebrew and then they have a two and a half month medical terminology Ulpan. As Israel needs 200 doctors every year, this fills a gap in Israeli society.
The Orchard Spring 2013 - Nissan 5773 23
One of the doctors that we met named Tanya, made aliyah six months ago. Why? She visited Israel on Birthright and fell in love with the country. Her sister made aliyah before her and said to her “we have to go to Israel because we are Jewish.”
Just think back to the years we fought on behalf of Soviet Jewry. Marches. Letters. Smuggling. And now this is what twenty-somethings tell their siblings. The world has changed.
The differences between Kiev and Israel are huge. On Friday morning we left a snowy, grey, dismal, dreary country. People were bundled in hats, babushkas and heavy coats. And then Friday early afternoon, we landed at Ben Gurion Airport. The sky was blue. The grass was green. It was so bright out that we needed to put on our sunglasses. Suddenly the WiFi on our smartphones worked so much better. And all of the rabbis on the bus felt like we were home. We acted like teenagers on our first trip to Israel. We’d only been in Kiev for a few days. But yet so much had changed for us.
How could we not help but think what it was like for a Ukrainian Jew to get off the airplane in Israel and begin their life in their new home?
Israel is just a million times better than Ukraine. It’s home. We know it. And the Jewish community in Kiev knows it. But just like we choose to live in an active Jewish Diaspora, there are Jews in Kiev who are choosing the same thing.
Shimon Peres once said that it is less important whether or not one’s grandparents are Jewish, but more important that your grandchildren are. That to me epitomizes our trip to Kiev and Israel. Reclaiming Jewish lives for the Jewish people. This mission was not random. We rabbis were there so we could tell you the stories of what we saw. And what I saw touched my heart. I hope it touches yours too when it is time for you to write your checks to UJA Federation of New York. Our brothers and sisters need recognition and support. I have more stories, but thank God, we have many more Shabbat mornings together.
Rabbi Robyn Fyer Bodzin Temple Israel for Conservative Judaism Queens, NY
The Orchard Spring 2013 - Nissan 5773 24 RABBI NEAL BOROVITZ Temple Israel
Our Torah portion this Shabbat called TRUMAH begins with the command” vayikchu li trumah” take for me an offering” Seven verses later we hear the command Vaasu li Mikdash I shachnati b’totacham Make for ME a sanctuary so that I can dwell in your midst.” The bulk of this week’s reading dealt with the building of the tabernacle which was the place where ancient Israel would bring their sacrifices as a means of worshipping God.
Nechama Leibowitz in her commentary on this week’s parsha rhetorically questions the order of these commands, asking: “Should not the establishment of a Sanctuary precede the command to bring the offerings?” We all know that the theme of Passover is the Exodus from Egypt. The Torah tells us that we are not only to remember the Exodus but in every generation see ourselves in the story.
In my re-written update to the “ Matzah of Peace “ supplement that is included on the Passover insert page of this bulletin I allude to the miracle of the 20th century Exodus from the Soviet Union . The Torah claims that there were 600,000 Israelites and an Eruv Rav, a mixed multitude of people who chose to cast their lot with the Jewish people who left Egypt with Moses. While that number is more mystical and metaphorical than actual we know that there were 1.8 million people Halachic Jews, patrilineal Jews and a mixed multitude of non-Jews who had married Jews who left the Soviet Union over the past 25 years. Some of the 1.8 million came to America; some of this group is active members of our congregation; some went to Western Europe and the overwhelming multitude went to Israel.
Remembrance of the Exodus from Egypt is the most often repeated theme in Jewish liturgy. Every morning and every evening we sing the Song of the Sea, mi chamocha and thank God for redeeming us from Egyptian bondage. For me the modern Exodus of Soviet Jewry is a miracle that I was personally blessed to be an eye witness and in a very small way be a participant. On my recent trip to Ukraine and Israel to celebrate not just commemorate the 25th anniversary of the opening of a gate in what Winston Churchill famously named “The Iron Curtain”, I was both blessed to see the on-going miracle of a Jewish re-birth in Ukraine and for the most part an amazing integration of one million immigrants, who came with no money, no language skills and, into a Jewish population of Israel that in 1991 numbered five million. Percentage wise it’s as if America would successfully integrate 60 million residents. (Think about how poorly we are doing with the 11 million undocumented immigrants, who are the subject of continued debate in America today,) Yes there are problems, including the issue of the Orthodox religious establishment’s placing of a stumbling blocks in the path of the 300,000 immigrants and their children who do not meet the Orthodox definition of Who is a JEW, but on this Passover at my Seder I am going to tell the story of One Man named Yosef Begun, a hero of the Soviet Jewish resistance, whom I had the honor to sit next to at a Shabbat dinner in Jerusalem on February 8, 2013.
Yosef Begun was an electrical engineer and mathematician in Moscow who in 1970 applied for a visa to immigrate to Israel, which under the letter of the law of the Soviet Union was his right. He was among the first of the heroic group who became known as “Refusnicks” Jews who were refused the right to emigrate. Begun, in what would become a precedent for others was fired from his job because of his application to emigrate and then arrested for the crime of being a “parasite”. In the Soviet Union it was illegal to be unemployed. When Dr. Begun publically protested his fate he was arrested on the charge of “Hooliganism” and from 1971 to 1988 spent most of those years either in Siberian Exile or imprisoned in the Soviet Gulag. He was released and allowed to emigrate to Israel in 1988 because of the efforts of American Jewish political pressure that inspired President Reagan to use the release of Begun and other Refusnicks as a pre-condition for improved relations between America and the Soviet Union.
The Orchard Spring 2013 - Nissan 5773 25 As I sat next to Dr. Begun, during Shabbat dinner and not only got the honor of hearing his formal presentation to our group of 33 rabbis from across North America, but the chance to engage in one on one conversation, I felt like a young kid meeting a super star who was about an inch shorter than me but whose humility made him seem taller than an NBA center. Two of the tidbits that Dr. Begun shared with me were that when he was in Siberian Exile he actually did receive thousands of letters that were sent “return receipt requested “to him from American Jews. Those letters he told me gave him inner warmth during those cold Siberian winters. He also told me of the “Soviet Jewry bracelet” those copper bands that so many of my generation wore with the names of Jews who were being denied the right to emigrate” that was given to him by President Reagan who had kept it on his White House desk for a year after it had been given to him by a Republican Jewish member of the United States Senate.
I believe that the mantra of modern Judaism is “Remind and Remember! In the age of twitter and Facebook too many of us live ONLY in the moment. Too many of the Jews I met in Ukraine and too many of us in our own community, similar to what is said of the Pharaoh of Egypt in the opening of Exodus “Do not know Yosef”. Friends I ask all of us who are old enough to remember the 20th century Exodus that was led by courageous men and women like Yosef Begun to make a point to remind those who are sitting around our Passover tables this year of modern Exodus, which like the Biblical narrative of the Exodus of old was despite its many problems and frustrations a true miracle that required each of us to give Trumah a true sacrifice of our time and talent and thereby build a Mikdash where the Presence of God can be felt dwelling in our midst. With our voices and with the courage of the Refusnicks the Pharoah of Moscow heard our call Shelach et Ami Our people have been liberated Now it is our responsibility to not only bring the gift of our hearts in thanksgiving but to teach and reach out to the millions who have been liberated by helping them and ourselves to Va yavduni to serve God through the study of Torah through the Worship of God and acts of Hesed Then we will truly fulfill the challenge voiced by Moses Shelach et ami va ya avduni that became the mantra of the Soviet Jewry movement.
Rabbi Neal Borovitz Temple Israel River Edge, NJ
The Orchard Spring 2013 - Nissan 5773 26 PASSOVER, SHAVUOT, ISRAEL INDEPENDENCE DAY SERMONIC THOUGHTS
“NEXT YEAR IN CYPRUS OR EL ARISH?” Rabbi Paul D. Kerbel
Each year at the Seder, we conclude our Passover celebration with the words: “Next Year In Jerusalem.” Jerusalem. The City of David. The eternal capital of the Jewish world. Since the Roman destruction of Jerusalem almost two thousand years ago, we have yearned for Jerusalem and prayed for our return to Zion. Jerusalem has been central to the Jewish people virtually since there was a Jewish people!
But over one hundred and ten years ago, the millennial-old dream of returning to Israel was in danger. Since Theodor Herzl created the World Zionist Congress in the summer of 1897, the modern Zionist movement sought to secure a modern homeland in Palestine, then under Ottoman control for 450 years. After six years of shuttle diplomacy crisscrossing Europe, Herzl had not achieved the results he worked so hard to secure.
In the early years of the twentieth century, reality set in. The Ottoman Empire was not prepared to give the Jews a home in their empire. No real options emerged for a Jewish state in Palestine. But concerns over increased immigration to Britain by Eastern European Jews led the British government to create a royal commission to explore settlement opportunities for the Jewish people.
One of British Jewry’s most prominent and influential members, Lord Rothschild was not a Zionist and did not support a Jewish homeland in Palestine. When Herzl mentioned, “I am planning to ask for a charter for a Jewish homeland in a British colony, Rothschild responded, “Why not take Uganda?” Herzl had other ideas in mind and since others were listening wrote down on a slip of paper: a colony in Sinai (near El Arish), Egyptian Palestine, Cyprus. Rothschild was in favor of pursuing these options. When discussion of a Jewish colony in British controlled Egypt was mentioned by Lord Chamberlain, the Colonial Secretary, Herzl was said to respond, “We will not go to Egypt; we have already been there!”
Lord Chamberlain, who subsequently made a tour of Africa in April, 1903, wrote to Theodor Herzl, “Dr. Herzl, I have found a land for you - Uganda!” Chamberlain noted, “while Uganda (Kenya) was hot on the coast”, he was convinced that “the interior was suitable for Europeans” and they could grow sugar and cotton there. Herzl initially dismisses the idea, knowing that the Jewish Homeland would have to be in or near Palestine, but, as other options did not materialize, Herzl was more inclined to consider Uganda.
The focus on Palestine was further shaken by events in Russia in May, 1903. In a savage pogrom in Kishinev, 45 Jews were murdered, close to 100 wounded and over 1500 Jewish homes and shops were destroyed. Already convinced that the Jews had no future in Russia, the Kishinev pogrom would thrust the Uganda plan into the major agenda item for the sixth annual Zionist Congress in Basle, Switzerland in late August.
As Chaim Weizman noted, “Normal activity seemed meaningless… our dreams for Palestine, our dreams for a Hebrew University receded into the background. Our eyes saw nothing but the blood of slaughtered men, women and children; our ears were deaf to everything but their cries.” Each year, at the Zionist Congress, a map of Palestine hung on the wall of the Opera Hall behind the dais. In August of 1903, the map of Palestine was replaced by a map of East Africa!
The Orchard Spring 2013 - Nissan 5773 27 Herzl, who conceded to his friends that he only viewed The Uganda Plan as ‘a means to an end,’ a temporary colony to prepare for settlement in Palestine, Herzl urged the delegates “to consider favorably proposals for the establishment of a Jewish colony in East Africa. “Zion this is not and can never become…it is and must remain an emergency measure to prevent further loses of our fragmented people.” The Uganda Plan split the congress and many Zionists from both Eastern and Western Europe, religious and secular, opposed The Uganda Plan and some even called for “a war on Herzl.” Delegates cried and wept on the floor. The Congress eventually voted against even temporary consideration of East Africa. Herzl left Basle exhausted and depressed.
Theodor Herzl, the founder of modern Zionism, the dreamer and architect of a return to the Jewish home in Palestine, would die one year later on July 4, 1904. Herzl may not have lived to see his dream become a reality. But his diaries leave clear evidence of both his vision and confidence. “I believe today that I created a Jewish State, Herzl wrote at the First Zionist Congress.” Almost exactly fifty years later the State of Israel became a reality with a divided Jerusalem as its capital.
As Professor Howard Sachar notes in his extensive “A History of Israel”, “Herzl put Zionism on the map; and in creating the World Zionist Congress and World Zionist Organization, he gave the Jewish people an address.” Even if we had settled in Cyprus or Uganda or El Arish, Herzl knew that one day we would return to our land. And oh, how we have! As we sing, ‘L’shanah ha’ba’ah byirushalayim’ at our seder table and read other Zionist texts, let us think of Herzl and his dream, his dedication and his sacrifice. And now, as we celebrate Israel’s 64th anniversary in late April, may we continue to turn Herzl’s dream into reality through our financial support, investment, visits and advocacy to make sure that Israel will always be there for us, for our children and future generations of our people for all eternity.
Rabbi Paul Kerbel is a rabbi of Congregation Etz Chaim, the immediate Past President of the Atlanta Rabbinical Association and an active leader in the Atlanta Jewish community and the Masorti Foundation for Conservative Judaism in Israel.
Rabbi Paul D. Kerbel Congregation Etz Chaim Atlanta, GA
The Orchard Spring 2013 - Nissan 5773 28 SHAVUOT FABLE Allen S. Maller
Shavuot is a great time to praise those non-Jews who have become Jewish, as well as those Jews who encouraged them to become Jewish and those who welcomed them into the Jewish people. The following haggadah is a good way to begin.
Two Jews in Los Angeles die at the same time. When they awake they find themselves sitting next to each other in a large room. In front of them, between two doors is a sign that says: TAKE A NUMBER. One of the Jews stands up right away and takes a number that reads #1. The other Jew says, “What is going on? The last thing I remember. I was in a hospital intensive care unit.“ Jew #1 says, “Me too. We both must have died. We are now in the next world and soon we are going to be evaluated to see where we fit in.”
The other Jew looks shaken. He asks, “Is there really a heaven and hell?” Jew #1 replies. ”Of course. I have always believed in heaven, but I am an orthodox Jew and we do not believe in eternal damnation in Hell. We believe in Gehennom, or what Catholics call purgatory, which is a painful self-examination of all the sin of your previous life. After that painful period of self-examination, which can take up to 12 months, you will be rewarded for all your Mitsvotin Heaven.”
Then one orthodox Jew is quiet for a while. Then he gets up and takes a number, which is #2, and sits down again. After a while he asks Jew#1, “Are you worried?”
Of course not says #1. I have always done lots of Mitsvot. I keep Kosher. I pray every day. I always observe Shabbat and Yom Tov. I give lots of money to Tsadakah. I have nothing to fear. Of course, no one is perfect. I am sure that I will have to spend a few weeks in Gehennom for gossiping, or some other small thing like that.”
A sign starts to flash: #1 please enter the door on the right. The orthodox Jew gets up and confidently enters the right side door. A few moments later the sign flashes again and Jew #2 enters the left door.
Two years later these two Jews meet again and discuss their self-examinations in Gehennom. “My self-exam took two months, said Jew#1, “how long did yours take?” “I was surprised” replied Jew #2, “it only took 7 weeks.” Jew #1 looks amazed and says, “How could that be? When they weighed your sins and your Mitsvot on the scales of justice, your Mitsvot could not have outweighed your sins.”
“Not at first” said Jew #2, “but then a large number of Mitsvot were added from another person; a non-Jewish woman who once sat next to me on a long flight from New York. We talked about religion, and encouraged her to study Judaism. I sent her some Jewish books and after she read them, I even took her to visit a Rabbi. A year later she decided to become Jewish and converted. So it turned out that I got credit for all the Mitsvot she did during her first year as a Jew.“
“I wish someone had told me about that when I was alive.” said Jew #1“Were you told about the roots of your soul? I was told that my soul had a root spark from Rabbi Akiba’s soul in it. That is why it is so important for me to do so many of the ritual Mitsvot in such great detail.” Jew#2 replied, “I was told that my soul had a root spark from Abraham and a root spark from Sarah in it. They made many converts to monotheism even before they came to the Land of Israel, and before there was any Torah or Talmud. That is why I try to reach out to Non-Jews who are interested in other religions and encourage them to study Judaism.”
Jew#1 smiled and said, “We obviously came here by two very different paths, but I am glad that we both ended up in the same place. We have a lot we can teach each other.”
Allen S. Maller Temple Akiba of Culver City Culver City, CA
The Orchard Spring 2013 - Nissan 5773 29 IS BECOMING JEWISH LIKE FALLING IN LOVE Rabbi Allen S. Maller
On Shavuot Jews around the world read the story of Ruth, Moabite woman who converted to Judaism. Ruth was not the first person to convert to Judaism; Abraham and Sarah were. And they in turn, influenced many other non-Jews to convert. The Torah tells us that when Abraham and Sarah left Haran to go to the Land of Canaan, many of their converts joined them on their journey. When Jacob’s sons married, most of them married the descendants of Abraham and Sarah’s early converts. How do we know this? Because only God can make a soul. Yet the Torah states that when Avram and Sarai left Haran to go to the land of Canaan, they took with them some members of their family, and the “souls that they made in Haran”. (Genesis 12:5) How can any human make a soul? Rashi, the famous 11th century French Biblical commentator, explains using a Midrash by Rabbi Eleazar ben Zimra that says “the souls that they made” refers to the many converts they made.
But the question still remains; how is a Jewish soul made for a non-Jew? In reality the transition from not being Jewish to feeling and thinking Jewish is a gradual one. In Islam and Christianity God comes first.The proclamation that “Allah is God and Muhammad is his Prophet” makes a person a Muslim. Believing Jesus is God’s son, and your savior, makes a person a Christian. For Christians and Muslims a valid conversion experience can take only a few hours. For Jews however, the process can take months and connecting to God usually occurs towards the end of the becoming Jewish process.
This follows the pattern established by Ruth, one of the most famous non-Jews to become Jewish. She states, “Where ever you go, I will go. Wherever you live, I will live. Your people shall be my people. Your God, shall be my God.” (Ruth 1:16) Think about the following questions:
1- Why does Ruth list God toward the end of the process, and not at the beginning?
2- Is it because Judaism does not teach that everyone needs to become Jewish to be saved or to go to heaven. Or because Judaism does not teach that everyone has to believe in monotheism in the same way Jews do. For most Jews, behaving like a Mentch is more important than believing the correct theology about God.
For most Jews, feeling love for the Jewish people, Jewish culture, Jewish music, and living a moral and positive Jewish life is more than believing the correct theology. Most Rabbis would agree with the above teachings. Most Reform and Progressive Rabbis would add that the desire to study and discuss Torah; combined with the desire to do both ethical and ritual Mitsvot, is more important than believing in God, because studying Torah and doing Mitsvot lead people to God. Thus, love of God is the goal, not the starting point for all born Jews; and for all those who choose to join our community.
4- When you fall in love, you meet the person first and go out. Then you start sharing your life and living together. When you marry you become part of another family; and your children create another family. When, after living a loving life with your partner and your family, you finally die, you will know that you have in truth lived a life blessed by God. As Ruth says, “Where ever you go, I will go. Wherever you live, I will live. Your people shall be my people. Your God, shall be my God. Where you die, there will I die. And there will I be buried.” So help me God. (Ruth 1:16-17) Becoming Jewish is desiring to live and love Jewishly because there is underneath that love, a hidden, slowly self-revealing Jewish identity of a soul that desires to return home; to where the soul belongs.
“The righteous of all nations have a place in the world to come.” (Jerusalem Talmud)
Rabbi Allen S. Maller Temple Akiba of Culver City Culver City, CA
The Orchard Spring 2013 - Nissan 5773 30 SHE SWAM IN Rabbi Jessica Spitalnic Brockman
Diana Nyad had a choice. She had just failed her third attempt to swim from Cuba to the Florida Keys. The first attempt was when she was just 28 and the third attempt was just a few short weeks ago. The problems she has encountered on these attempts were great and varied. Sharks, jellyfish, dehydration, rough seas, nausea and exhaustion make the short list. Diana Nyad is a strong swimmer with multiple records in swimming. But this route was elusive to her. Technology had developed for her the strongest wetsuits possible, creams were developed to keep out the jellyfish and she had a team monitoring her journey, many in boats by her side. This team included trainers who shooed away sharks, and scientists who examined the conditions and doctors who could revive her from the stings of the particularly deadly jellyfish who were in these waters. In her words she had “no shadow of doubt that [she] was going to swim the entire 103 miles between Cuba and Florida.
“[F]or the 51 hrs, 5 mns, I was in the water, from the plunge into the sea off Havana, I still believed, stroke by stroke, that I was going to get there.” But even with all these protections, her third attempt had to end. She was finally stopped by the effects of the jellyfish that were finding the only open part of her body, her lips and if she kept going she was going to go into pulmonary distress. Crushed to end her third attempt, Nyad made a significant decision that had the tremendous impact of turning this failure, the third failed attempt she had known, from a failure into a success.
She made a decision to swim in. It was not an easy thing to do she was sad that she once again had failed to reach the other shore. There had been years of planning for this most recent swim and she and her team had truly believed she was going to succeed this time and she didn’t.
She didn’t and yet she did.
In the past, when these failed attempts ended, she came in by boat. But this time would be different.
As ESPN.com reported on August 25th, “… just one day after being lifted from the water in grave distress after swimming for [all those] hours… She got back off the boat, and with her body scalding from the saltwater assaulting her already burned and stinging flesh, she swam the last yards to the Florida shore.
“The core members of the crew were around me,” Nyad recalled, “and I told them, ‘You know what, I’m just so sick of that feeling of driving back into the dock, that defeated feeling, because I don’t want to look at this as a defeat. There are too many people who follow me who have all kinds of [serious] disappointments. ... If something doesn’t end well, does it mean that entire journey wasn’t worthwhile and glorious? …
“So we all decided that instead of just coming into shore and people saying poor me, what if I showed that I’m proud of having a strong, 63-year-old body and take a few more strokes? Even though that’s not the way I wanted to come into the beach, that’s me, that’s a winner who swims in. It was the right thing to do and I’m glad we did it, if only symbolic.”
She swam in.
But what do we do when our failures do not feel this way? What about the rest of us who are not breaking world records? Our failures, our mistakes – the things that gnaw at us like those jellyfish gnawed at Nyad – what do we do with them? Even with her team of 53 people, Nyad couldn’t accomplish what she wanted to. Our teams are far smaller. And while what gnaws at us, or holds us back and prevents us from achieving may not be as deadly as the jellyfish Nyad encountered, life obstacles can be paralyzing.
The Orchard Spring 2013 - Nissan 5773 31 Our path to healing, like Diane’s, is to take the devastation and go forward. If we did not do that, we would still be in Egypt, slaves to Pharaoh. This entire Passover season resonates with stories of the pain our people have known. Resiliency is a noble trait. But it is also a Jewish trait because if you look at our history it is in some ways hard to believe we are here. Again and again the attempts to destroy the Jewish people have been daunting. And we sit here today, yet again, worried for Israel’s safety and security as threats from Iran are serious and have been for years. With an international climate that isolates Israel and a population in Israel while it one day hopes for peace at the current hour, wants security and the surrounding nations have given no evidence to think that is imminent. Diana Nyad was one person with sharks and jellyfish attacking. Attacks on Israel by her metaphorical sharks affects significantly more lives. And while Nyad’s swim was optional, Israel’s reality is not.
The deepest wrinkle on a forehead I have ever seen was on the forehead of the man who was the editor of the Jerusalem Post for ten years, David Horowitz. When he left the Jerusalem Post, Israel’s English Language Daily paper, and started an online site The Times of Israel, he offered a scathing look at a snapshot of his world. He wrote, “I happen to think that we Jews, in this one country where we’re a majority, can be our own worst enemies – spectacularly intolerant of one another, in ways we would never tolerate in Jewish communities overseas. We undermined our two previous attempts at sovereignty millennia ago, through internal hatreds; we’ve murdered our own prime minister this time; we suffer streams of Judaism furiously at odds with each other. We argue bitterly, incessantly, over the best means to safeguard the well-being of the Jewish state and the Jewish nation worldwide.” That is what reporting on news in the Middle East for your career can do to you. This man loves Israel and has devoted his life to reporting on her and yet this is what he has to say. He sees a nation that is wounded and broken.
So what is the right way to act when we are wounded or disappointed? How can we as a people find that strength to keep swimming as Nyad did, even if the journey is not what we expected?
I think the answer to that lies in the Talmudic story of how one will know how to recognize the messiah when he arrives one day. While as Reform Jews, we await a messianic age, a time of tranquility, traditional Judaism understands that there will one day be a messiah, one person, a descendant of King David that will herald in for Judaism a messianic age imbued with peace. In the Talmud, one rabbi asks another how they will they ever know who that person is. The perplexing answer given is that “He is sitting among the poor at gates of the city, and they are all covered with wounds. While the others tend to all their wounds and sores all at the same time, the messiah only tends to his wounds one at a time, saying to himself, ‘Perhaps I shall be needed, I must always be ready, so as not to delay for even a moment.’” (Talmud Sanhedrin 98a) Wounded. Poor. Tending his own sores. The depiction of what the messiah himself will look like is that of a wounded person.
But the way he tends to his wounds is what is unique. One by one, so he quickly can be ready when he is needed. The wounded, perhaps even leprous man the midrash depicts– even he has the ability to find the strength to help others. Messiah in midrash knew that. Nyad swimming in knew that. We as a people need to know that too.
If you look at the wounded man of the Messiah story you realize that the image of the ideal that story portrays is that we must face ourselves and take care of selves. We need to tend to the wounds that are there, even messiah does, but in doing that we can’t get so distracted that we don’t help others because in coming together all the more so in times of pain we can derive strength. Father Henri Nouwen, inspired by this Jewish text of the messiah used this as a foundation for his book The Wounded Healer. p. 100 “…Shared pain [does not need to] be paralyzing, but mobilizing …When we become aware that we do not have to escape our pains, but that we can mobilize them into a common search for life, those very pains are transformed from expressions of despair into signs of hope…” It is the trait of resilience that helps us go on.
The Orchard Spring 2013 - Nissan 5773 32 A researcher curious as to why there had been a significantly larger amount of rebellions in Eastern Poland, on the Russian border, than Western Poland during World War II discovered something painful and important. In Eastern Poland there had been “clandestine political activity of passionate [Zionist] young Jews... In western Poland, occupied by Germany from 1939 to 1941, Jews were persecuted as Jews, but the Nazis did little to suppress Jewish political activity.” The Soviets in the east, intensely clamped down on Zionist groups and so, “Jews in eastern Poland learned the tradecraft of underground organization — smuggling, clandestine publishing and sustaining secret networks.”… This was their first experience working underground, so when the Germans came, they knew how to do it.” In 1942, “[In Western Poland] some of them started organizing, but they did not have the skills. It was too late to learn them, and they were killed almost immediately. In the midst of the darkest days of modern history, those in Eastern Poland who had already been through difficulty and rebellion under the Soviets, who had started to mobilize in the years before, were more equipped to rebel against the Nazis when the time arose. (Eugene Finkel, a PHD student at the University of Wisconsin Aug. 30, 2012, by David Tenenbaum, University of Wisconsin) What becomes painfully clear is that the most tragic and difficult circumstances, the challenges that create the need for us to recalibrate and reevaluate can be the most useful tools that we use to face what lies ahead for us, personally and communally.
Of course, we never want to fail, to hurt, to fall, to experience the difficult – but if it is has to be – what place can it have? If it must be, the impact that failure can have on our lives may be greater than any success we ever know. Israel’s journalist David Horowitz has the biggest wrinkles but he is also the best equipped because he examines her daily and contemplates along with its leaders and its citizens what is the next move that will ensure the survival of the Jewish state, no matter what danger is around the corner.
We are blessed to be asked by our tradition to remember the most difficult days constantly. And that is what this holiday of Passover is about. Our most difficult days. We do not bask in our glory, we instead are brought to our knees in forgiveness. We do not blot out the names of those who have passed away, we relive the pain of their loss annually. We do not wipe out the tragedies that befell our people, we intensely pray about them. And we do not gloss over the worst of our year, we go forward not in spite of, but because of it. And in those most humbling moments of defeat and difficulty, pain and loss, may we find strength and insight, meaning and love. May these days be our greatest teachers and this journey our greatest guide and may we go forward in courage and strength to shalom, wholeness and peace, speedily and in our time.
Rabbi Jessica Spitalnic Brockman Temple Beth El of Boca Raton Boca Raton, FL
The Orchard Spring 2013 - Nissan 5773 33 FLOUR & WATER: IT’S JUST A MATTER OF TIME! Rabbi Francine Roston
I have a new understanding of Hametz & Matzah after living with a baker of bread this past year. When you bake bread and matzah, you use the same ingredients—flour and water. The only difference is: TIME!
My husband Marc took up bread baking over the past six months, and our kitchen is usually covered in flour or bread crumbs. There is no bread machine and no store-bought yeast. This is bread the way it might have been made in ancient times.
When you are a bread baker, you are always in some stage of the process—at least this is the way it goes in our house. At the beginning of this process, you grow a starter. Marc mixed some flour and pineapple juice and let it sit on the counter exposed to the air so that natural airborne yeast were invited to the party. The host provided sugar and the yeast kindly added carbon dioxide to the mix. The mixture fermented/soured and we had our starter. Next, and more frequently, you take some of the starter, add flour and water and make a “sponge.” The sponge sits and ferments and rises in a warm place. And, then, after some kneading and forming and more flour, you bake your dough. Then we have bread! The loaves cool, they are sliced and they are eaten!
Our kitchen counters go from covered with flour to covered with bread crumbs and once the bread and its crumbs disappear, it is time to start all over again. Time to make more bread, more Challah, more Hametz!
Making bread is all about time. It is not a fast process in the traditional mode. We figured out it probably takes about 18 hours to bake a good loaf of homemade bread. Making Matzah is a different story. Matzah-baking is all about time as well; but it’s about racing against the clock. Time is the enemy in matzah-baking. From the time that the first water touches the special “watched” flour, to the end of baking, must be no more than 18 minutes.
There is great anxiety about eight days of matzah—no bread, no pizza, no pasta. Many people dread the restriction of matzah and its flat, dry nature. But, maybe, just maybe, after a few minutes of our study together, you might find some redemption in our poor man’s bread—Matzah for Pesah.
First, why do we eat matzah?
Exodus 12:39 And they baked unleavened cakes of the dough that they had taken out of Egypt, for it was not leavened, since they had been driven out of Egypt and could not delay; nor had they prepared any provisions for themselves.
Deuteronomy 16:3 You shall not eat anything leavened with [the Pesah]; for seven days thereafter you shall eat unleavened bread, bread of distress [lechem oni] for you departed from the land of Egypt hurriedly—so that you may remember the day of your departure from the land of Egypt as long as you live.
Matzah bends time. When we eat it, we are transported in time, back to Egypt, back to that great moment when we realized it was truly time to go. So we packed up our belongings, fled the nation of Egypt where we were enslaved and oppressed, and we left for something better. We left for a better future.
Matzah brings us back to slavery. It is lechem oni, the bread of distress. It is the meager portion of a poor person. It is the dry, unfulfilling portion of a slave whose destiny is out of his control.
Matzah also brings us back to the moment of redemption. It is also lachma d’heruta, the bread of freedom. We eat it “so that we may remember the day of our departure from the land of Egypt.” Not our days of slavery, but the day we left is invoked when we bite the matzah. Yachatz, the step in the seder when we break the matzah, is one of the many moments in the seder when we make a physical sign to represent the spiritual lesson. As the matzah is broken in two we see there are two different times that the matzah represents—the time of slavery and oppression and the time of freedom, faith and redemption. The latter is bigger, it is left to the end, it is the treasured portion; it is the last taste we are supposed to have at the seder.
The Orchard Spring 2013 - Nissan 5773 34 Matzah, as the bread of freedom, is a taste of a specific moment. That is, the moment when we were ready to leave, the moment when we crossed over to a new stage in life, the moment when everything changed and we weren’t even sure what it all meant and what life would be like on the other side, but we went. With speed, running, rushing into the unknown new place, having faith it would be better than the past.
Matzah is also the enemy of time. With time comes fermentation, souring, puffiness. When we eat the matzah, we invoke the communal experience of slavery and freedom. When we eat the matzah, we are also taken on an individual, spiritual experience.
Over the next few short days, we are supposed to search out the hametz and remove it from our houses. We are also supposed to remove it from our souls. The “puffed up” nature of hametz represents the character traits of arrogance and conceit. The flat, unleavened matzah represents humility and a freedom from the limitations that self-centeredness and arrogance present. We can truly experience freedom and spiritual growth when we search out the areas in our hearts, minds and souls where we have become puffed up, thinking only of ourselves and as greater than others and, therefore, blind to the various opportunities that life in community and relationship presents. Only after we acknowledge our faults and recognize our smallness in the world and the greatness of a higher power, can we be freed from that which enslaves our souls. And then, we can be truly free.
Often I am preaching that we should all slowdown in our lives, stop rushing and running in order to enjoy life more. But, today, my message is different. The lesson of Matzah is: Some things in life are worth rushing for! And in Judaism, those things are “mitzvahs.” In a common rabbinic saying that connects matzah and mitzvah, we are taught: mitzvah she’haba’ah leyadcha al tachmitzena, when the opportunity to do a mitzvah comes your way, do not let it spoil; do not let it turn to chametz; we should rush to do mitzvot.
On this Shabbat haGadol I hope you will meditate on the nature of bread and the nature of matzah. Following Shabbat, I hope you will rush to perform the mitzvot of cleaning your homes, removing the chametz and distributing it to the poor. I hope you will rush to search for the hametz and recite the formula to nullify all the flour stuck in the deep cracks of the kitchen so that your home is hametz-free. I hope you will rush to remember the Pesah and perform the mitzvot of Pesah.
And, as you eat the matzah, I hope you will be transported in time—to the journey from slavery to freedom. I hope and pray that for eight days of Passover, the matzah of Pesah teaches us many lessons, transforms our lives and helps us grow in our souls so that on the other side...when all the counters and tables are covered with matzah crumbs and the last guest has left...we feel fulfilled, happy with our lives and our lot, filled with the realization of the blessings of our lives and the gifts of freedom we enjoy...May we all conquer time, fill our time with the sacred acts of Passover mitzvahs and enjoy the feast of Passover, zman heruteinu while dining on the bread of freedom, the sacred matzah!!
Shabbat Shalom! Hag Sameah! May you and your family have a joyous holiday and inspiring s’darim!
Rabbi Francine Roston Congregation Beth El South Orange, NJ
The Orchard Spring 2013 - Nissan 5773 35 CALL ME MARA . . . RESPONDING TO PEOPLE IN TIMES OF CRISIS Rabbi David J. Zucker Rabbi Bonita E. Taylor
In the Megillah reading for Shavuot, The Book of Ruth, we find the well-known and beloved words that have been a part of many engagement, wedding and renewal ceremonies: “I will go where you go . . . Your God shall be my God”). Of course, biblically, they were not spoken by one lover to another but by Ruth to her mother-in-law, Naomi. The romantic overtones and popularity of these words obscure their original context and overshadow the poignant words that Naomi speaks a few lines later when she and Ruth arrive at Bethlehem. There, the city is amazed to see her. The town’s women exclaim, “Can this be Naomi?” To which Naomi explains that although she left Bethlehem full, with the demise of her husband and her sons, she now returns empty of all that had been dear to her. She further responds, “Do not call me Naomi [pleasant]. Call me Mara [bitter], for [God] . . . has dealt harshly with me . . . has brought misfortune upon me” (Ruth 1:20-21).
These words have a strangely contemporary ring to them. Within the last few years, many people in and out of this country have lost loved ones and/or their homes to hurricanes, tornados, tsunamis, terrorist attacks, and the like. Added to this is the widespread economic downturn that has deprived many people of their jobs and in too many cases, their homes. What had been a very pleasant life now has become a bitter one. In effect, they call out, “Do not call me Naomi. Call me Mara, for my lot is very bitter.” And some cry out, “Call me Mara, for [God] … has dealt harshly with me.”
In our roles as professional chaplains or pastoral caregivers, we often sit with people in their vulnerability, in dark times in their lives. Often in their suffering, they despair that the relationship that they have with God is not the one that they thought they had or else why would God have allowed such misfortune to fall upon them! How might we respond to these people when they come to us for solace? What might we say, what words will honor their trauma?
First, we must acknowledge that they do not need “our words.” Although it is natural that we would want to offer advice, we must understand that when people come to us and unburden their hearts, they do not expect economic or legal advice. There are other professionals and/or loved ones that they will seek out for those issues. At times like this, it is also natural that we want to suggest that life will get better before too long. In reality, we probably do not know what to do in their specific case, and as noted above, there are others much better qualified to give them practical direction. Further, it is futile to say that life will get better because besides being a close-to-meaningless statement, we do not know that their lives will get better. At most, words of advice make us feel like we have done “something” and we feel less helpless. We need to admit to ourselves that in the wake of life-shattering trauma, we are helpless. Further, the more we talk, the more we stifle them with the subliminal message that we do not want to hear their sadness.
What can we do? We can be a supportive presence and accept them where they are without trying to minimize their tzuris by offering them false hope or otherwise cheering them up. We can appreciate the magnitude of their sorrows, help them to further verbalize their laments, and encourage them to sing their “blues.” For who has a better right to sing the blues than someone whose world has been turned upside down, especially when it shows no signs of turning right side up in the immediate future? Most importantly, because as clergy we represent God to many people, when we sit with them attentively, letting them speak, and acknowledge their losses, we inherently carry the message that God is an ongoing presence even in times of adversity. We can additionally communicate this by taking the words of their blues songs and reframing them into spontaneous, custom-made prayers.
The book of Ruth does not record a response from the women of Bethlehem. Perhaps, they had the wisdom just to allow Naomi to speak the truth of her heart. Perhaps, they knew that it was not what they could say in reply to her that would make a difference; rather, it was their willingness to take the time to listen. With such an empathetic reaction, over time Naomi could not fail to heal.
Rabbi David J. Zucker, PhD, is recently retired after having served as Rabbi/Chaplain and Director of Chaplaincy Care at Shalom Park, a senior continuum of care center for 18 years, and also as chaplain at Shalom Hospice in Aurora, CO. He is a Board Certified Chaplain (BCC) by the National Association of Jewish Chaplains (NAJC), on whose board he served for many years. A contributor to many journals, he is a member of the JFNA Rabbinic Cabinet. www.davidjzucker.org.
Rabbi Bonita E. Taylor, DMin is the Associate Director of CPE, and Director of Jewish Chaplaincy Education at HealthCare Chaplaincy in Manhattan, NY. She is an ACPE (Association of Clinical Pastoral Education) Supervisor, and a Board Certified Chaplain by the NAJC, on whose board she served for many years. She was designated the 2008/5768 Chaplain of the Year by the New York Board of Rabbis (NYBR). [email protected]
The Orchard Spring 2013 - Nissan 5773 36 DECEMBER 6TH, 2012 Ethan Prosnit
December 6th, 1987… It was cold and crisp, by early morning groups began arriving at the White House. With their signs, slogans and songs, they created an inspiring mood. Throughout the morning, the numbers kept growing. When it came time to march towards the Capitol, top politicians, religious figures, former Prisoners of Zion, and refuseniks, led the way. And then came the rally itself, with its long list of distinguished speakers, VP George H.W. Bush, senators and members of congress, the singing group Peter, Paul and Mary, Elie Wiesel, and Natan Sharansky.
David Harris, executive director of the American Jewish Committee, recalls standing on the stage and looking out at the crowd. “What a moving sight. People had responded to the call. In doing so, they sent a powerful message to Jews in the Soviet Union: You are not alone. You are not forgotten. Together, we will succeed.” More than 250,000 people marched, at the largest Jewish rally in American history. Shortly afterward, the gates of the USSR opened, and the Jews flooded out.
The gathering on that morning, exactly 25 years ago today was the culminating event of a generation-long struggle. The Soviet Jewry Movement was a worldwide effort to free the Jews of the USSR, so they could practice their religion without state persecution; so they could live without discrimination, and emigrate to Israel or the United States to find the blessings of freedom. In 1987 when the Soviet Jews asked… “Where are my brothers and sisters?” Jews all around the world responded.
Many of us in this chapel responded. Over the past month, I have talked with many of you, who were at that rally in Washington. I don’t know if you remember seeing ME there. I was the cute 4 year-old, wearing a Canadian Mapleleafhat. Together we marched, we held signs, and we demanded that Mikhail Gorbachev extend his policy of glasnost, ending forced assimilation, and allowing emigration from the USSR.
Marching was not the only way to help. Over many years, Jews travelled to the Soviet Union smuggling in contraband -- siddurim, Judaica, clothing, medicine, and food. Undercover rabbis from our movement visited Jews in need, covertly helping them celebrate Shabbat and Jewish holidays. Soviet Jewry became an issue that united us – we, Jews, stood together against oppression and called for its end. Republican or Democratic, Reform, Conservative, or Orthodox, we answered the call of our Soviet brethren… when they asked, “Where are my brothers and sisters?” G’demoyBraya I sistray.
Where are my brothers and sisters? This question so appropriate for the Soviet Jewry Movement, also reverberates through this week’s Torah portion. When Joseph reached Shechemin Genesis 37, looking for his brothers, a man came upon him wandering in the fields. The man asked him, “What are you looking for?” Joseph answered, “I am looking for my brothers.
Could you tell me where they are pasturing?” The man replied “Nas-ooMeezeh.”
ּועְסָנ הֶּזִמ יִּכ יִּתְעַמָׁש םיִרְמֹאהָכְלֵנהָנְיָתֹּד
Biblical interpreters have had a field day with these verses. The question raised by many commentators is why did the “man” answer Joseph with the odd phrase Nas-ooMizeh? “They have traveled away from this.” If the man wanted to refer to a place from which Joseph’s brothers were journeying, the man could have used the language of MiPo (From here) or MiCan (From There). Yet the man says “mizeh” (from this).
Rashi and Ramban explain that when the man tells Joseph they journeyed away from “zeh,” zeh actually refers to the word Achi in the previous verse. This implies that Joseph’s brothers had journeyed away not just from their brother, but from brotherhood itself. Mizeh may symbolize much more than a place. In the Rome edition of Rashi’s commentary, the numerical value of zehis highlighted. Zayin and hey equal twelve…. by moving away from zeh, the brothers were moving away from the idea that they were a group of twelve. After their painful sibling experiences, Joseph’s brothers no longer wanted to be brothers with Joseph. They look at Joseph, feeling nothing, feeling no connection, feeling no interest in being his partner.
I wonder sometimes if, the Reform Movement in North America has journeyed away from this feeling of brotherhood, with other Jews around the world, too. And of course when I say brotherhood I mean it be inclusive of sisterhood as well. For instance, when the Jews in the Former Soviet Union today ask where are my brothers and sisters?
The Orchard Spring 2013 - Nissan 5773 37 Gdemoibrat ya? Gdemoisestry? How do we answer them? Do we suffer from the same problem Joseph once had, with respect to those wandering Jews in Ukraine, Russia, or the Baltics? Have we journeyed away from zeh…? ʹ Approximately 1.5 million Jews remain in the former Soviet Union. Thanks, in part to the efforts of the American Jewish community those Jews are now free, but they are still our brothers and sisters, and they still need our help. And the current economic situation only adds to the critical necessity of helping those Jews. In most of the FSU there is an annual inflation rate of about 8.8%. This inflation rate has hurt both elderly and middle income families. An inadequate social safety net has left many Jews living in the FSU unable to meet rising costs for heat, food and other basic needs.
Some of us have said Hineni, when these Jews have asked for help from us. A number of us participated in the Pesach Project leading Passover Seders bringing necessary supplies, monetary donations, smiles, pastoral care visits, and showing the Jewish community that there are Jews in Israel and North America who care. Yet, beyond that week’s visit have we lived up to our fraternal responsibility for these Jewish communities?
On one trip to Almaty, Kazakhstan with the Joint Distribution Committee, I observed a burgeoning Jewish community and saw the excitement of Kazakhstani Jewish students as they yearned to learn more about their Jewish faith. Since the fall of communism, the younger generation has wanted to know more about their Jewish heritage, traditions and rituals. They want to build their own religious community focused on prayer, egalitarianism, and social justice. And though there are few role models, a limited amount of Jewish knowledge, and scarce resources to build the rich Jewish lifeweare so lucky to enjoy, I truly believe that there is much potential for a progressive Jewish community to blossom in Kazakhstan, as well as many other places like it.
So what can we do to spark that potential in the Jews in the FSU? HUC-JIR could partner with the World Union for Progressive Judaism to develop summer internships at a few of the 21 progressive communities in Russia. Or perhaps, after ordination we could develop sister congregation relationships not only with progressive synagogues in Israel but also with congregations in the FSU. In developing these partnerships we would demonstrate tangibly to Jews in the FSU that their brothers and sisters have not forgotten them.
Moreover, I believe the Russian Jews in the FSU are not the only ones asking where are my brothers and sisters. The truth is we only need to go nine miles from here…. Take the N or the D to Bensonhurst, Coney Island or Sheepshead Bay.
Just over a month ago, many of us donated food to those Russian Jews who lost everything because of super storm Sandy. Some of us visited apartments of Russian Jews, handed out water and shared stories when the lights were out. Others volunteered to celebrate Shabbat at the Park Slope armory with Russian nursing home evacuees. The storm was a wakeup call that in our own city there is a great need to help the elderly Russian Jewish community. But now that the storm has passed, are we truly there for the Russian Jewish Community in this great city?
For instance take Violetta. Violetta is a 29 year old first-generation American whose family emigrated from Odessa in the 1980s. She worked as the director of teen and youth programming at the Jewish Community House of Bensonhurst, the same JCC where Sandy Kofax played basketball, before he played big-league baseball. She recently married another Russian Jew from Brooklyn. She told me that all she wanted was a Reform Jewish wedding ceremony. Yet she couldn’t find a Reform Rabbi who spoke Russian. She looked for over three months for a Reform Rabbi to officiate at her wedding, and she finally found one that she had to bring in from over 200 miles away.
New York City is populated by more Russian Jews than any other city in the world. And the percentage of Russian Jews in the US Jewish community ranges from 6 to 12 percent; a community of culturally and theologically diverse Jewry – and one that has distinct needs. Has our progressive Jewish community met their needs to the best of our ability?
For the most part, I do not think that we have. I think that it is a group of Jews we have generally ignored. There are over 50,000 Russian Jews in South Brooklyn and there is not one Reform Synagogue. That is a missed opportunity, at best, and a tragedy at worst.
Chabad and Aish funded programs have taken over South Brooklyn. While these programs are attractive to some, many young Russian Jews who are just beginning to explore their own Judaism, and looking to build community, simply do not find a place in these organizations. They are too extreme and not a good fit for the lives that these young Russian Jews want to live.
The Orchard Spring 2013 - Nissan 5773 38 There are also large Russian Jewish communities in Chicago, Boston, South Florida, and San Francisco. And while most Progressive Jewish communities have not met the needs of these Russian Jews some have been there to support this growing Jewish population in increasingly creative ways.
Congregation Beth Am in Palo Alto, California, (I have inside information on this synagogue. All one has to do is ask “where is my own brother” To find out!) Congregation Beth Am runs multiple educational and cultural programs in Russian. Beth Am’s Émigré Program was founded in 1989, and initially focused on resettlement, Today, the needs of émigrés are different – the focus is now on educating and engaging émigré families to strengthen Jewish identity and start them on their lifelong Jewish journey. Beth Am’s Émigré Program offers family and adult education classes, as well as holiday celebrations. Their prayer books have been translated into Russian and transliterated into Cyrillic. And their congregation has grown from this interaction just as much as those whom they serve.
The work does not have to wait until we start to serve congregations. It can begin in this community, too… Could HUC-JIR actively recruit Russian speakers to become rabbis, cantors, or educators? In our Modern Jewish History class we learn about the duma and the pogroms, but could we also learn about the Soviet Jewry Movement in North America and about Russian Jewish communities today. In our education classes, could we bring in an educator who teaches in the Russian Jewish community? This person could help us understand their unique needs and develop helpful strategies to teaching a community where many are just finding out they are Jewish.
I’ve been speaking for the past 15 minutes. And you might be wondering, what does this all matter? Why does he care? Sure, this is important history to know, yet when there so many other people, so many other causes that need our help today, why should we focus our time and effort on these Russian Jewish Communities? The answer… the work we started in the 70s and 80s is not done. Yes, Russian Jews are free to practice their religion, yet since then we have done little to help them experience the Jewish life that makes freedom the ultimate gift. The truth is, the story of these Russian Jews is not so different from many of our grandparents’ and great-grandparents’ journeys.
One of the main reasons most of us are able to survive and thrive even today, was that there were other Jews who saw our forebears as their people and helped them to adjust to a new and challenging cultural world. Don’t we have the same obligation?
While 25 years have passed since that historic march, I’m still optimistic that once again we can reach out to our Russian brothers and sisters. And Joseph’s story helps bolster my optimism. Oddly enough, after all the difficulties Joseph had with his brothers, during his early life, Joseph can serve as a model on how to be a good sibling.
As you know, the young Joseph didn’t treat his brothers well at all. Yet, when his brothers came to him in Egypt, Joseph reached out and supported them during a most intense famine. This is a powerful example that there is always hope for reestablishing brotherhood. When Joseph shares a feast with his brothers, this is the first time since they sold him into slavery that the brothers feel complete. They began the process of piecing together that brotherhood that they had left behind…. That feeling of zeh.
Twenty five years ago, my entire family, Dr. Panken, Dr. Weiss, Rabbi Davidson, and many others in this chapel stood at the rally, responding to the vital question of where are my brothers and sisters. We helped change the course of history for the Jews of the USSR. Today we once again have the ability to alter history. Like Joseph and his brothers, we can find a way to reconnect, to reach out to our brothers and sisters. Even after a generation has passed we can still change lives. Let us seek out that brotherhood, that sisterhood, and develop partnerships and outreach to Russian Jews in North America and in the FSU.
When our brothers and sisters in Kiev, Almaty, Moscow, Palo Alto, Toronto, or in New York City ask…. Gdemoibrat yaisestry? Let our answer ring out as clearly as it did so many years ago: We are your brothers, We are your sisters. And we will stand with you. ʹ
Ethan Prosnit is a fifth year Rabbinic Student at HUC-JIR. This sermon was his Senior Sermon
The Orchard Spring 2013 - Nissan 5773 39 THE INS AND OUTS OF CHAMETZ Rabbi Amy Scheinerman
If you ever spent any time on the playground in third grade, or in the cafeteria in seventh grade, you already know a great deal about social identity, even if you are not familiar with the lingo that accompanies this field of social psychology pioneered by Henri Trajfel. We humans have a proclivity to form “ingroups” (people with whom we identify and toward whom we have an affinity) and “outgroups” (people who are often the subject of our contempt, and with whom we feel ourselves to be in competition). This all-too-human propensity breeds prejudice, cronyism, and collective narcissism.
Social identity theorists tell us, however, that our individual attitudes and behavior are not determined solely by our “ingroup.” Rather they lie along a continuum between interpersonal behavior and intergroup behavior. Put more simply: I’m not an automaton of my social group; I choose my attitudes and opinions depending upon how I value and privilege my individual relationships and my membership in a social grouping.
I heard a striking example of individual values trumping group values. A man recounted how his elderly grandmother, living in Germany, went to the park each day and sat on a bench talking with another elderly woman, a Christian lady. That’s it. That’s the whole Torah. Here is the commentary: Each day these two old women sat together for an hour chatting about their children and grandchildren. They did not visit one another’s homes. Their families never met or socialized. Yet these daily conversations imbued the Christian woman with a deep sense that this Jew was a human being in “her world” about whom she cared. At her insistence, and against their inclination, the Christian woman’s family saved the Jewish family. The individual relationship trumped membership in a social group — all because two elderly women sat together for an hour each day on a park bench.
On the first day of Pesach we read Exodus 12:21-51, which recounts theTenth Plague: “their” children die, but “our” children live. From the outset, Moses reminds the people (Exodus, ch. 12) that what they are doing in crisis mode at this moment, they will repeat yearly through a series of practices designed to teach the next generation and all those to follow:
This day shall be to you one of remembrance: you shall celebrate it as a festival to the Lord throughout the ages; you shall celebrate it as an institution for all time…You shall observe the [Feast of] Unleavened Bread, for on this day I brought your ranks out of the land of Egypt; you shall observe this day throughout the ages as an institution for all time… (Exodus 12: 16, 17)
So far, we presume that Moses is addressing the Israelites. But wait:
No leaven shall be found in your houses for seven days. For whoever eats what is leavened, that person shall be cut off from the community of Israel, whether he is a stranger (ger) or a citizen (ezrach) of the country. (Exodus 12:19)
Henri Trajfel, the British social psychologist who pioneered social identity theory was born Mersz Mordche in 1919 in Poland. Facing restrictions placed on Jews seeking education, he left Poland to study chemistry at the Sorbonne. When World War II broke out, he volunteered to serve in the French army. Within a year, he was taken prisoner by the Germans and rode out the rest of the war in a series of POW camps. At the end of the war, Trajfel learned that his entire family and most of his friends in Poland had been murdered by the Nazis. He dedicated the remainder of his life to studying the psychology and interplay of bigotry and intergroup relations.
If the ger and the ezrach are cut off for eating chametz, they are considered members of the “ingroup.” And further in the same chapter:
The Lord said to Moses and Aaron: This is the law of the Passover offering: No foreigner (ben neikhar) shall eat of it. But any slave (eved ish) a man has bought may eat of it once he has been circumcised. No bound (toshav) or hired laborer (sakhir) shall eat of it. It shall be eaten in one house: you shall not take any of the flesh outside the house; nor shall you break a bone of it. The whole community of Israel (adat Yisrael) shall offer it. If a stranger (ger) who dwells with you would offer the Passover to the Lord, all his males must be circumcised; then he shall be admitted to offer it; he shall be as a citizen of the country (ezrach ha-aretz). But no uncircumcised person may eat of it. There shall be one law (torah achat) for the citizen (ezrach) and for the stranger (ger) who dwells among you. (Exodus 12:43-49)
The Orchard Spring 2013 - Nissan 5773 40 Torah acknowledges “ingroups” and “outgroups” but seeks to establish permeable boundaries. All rights of citizenship apply to the ger (the resident alien) as much as to any Jew. People are not “other” if their intent is peaceful and they live with you as neighbors and friends. Our arms and minds should be open, our boundaries permeable. And lest we have any doubt that this was the Jewish ideal from the beginning, let us recall v’gam erev rav alah itam, a mixed multitude went up with them [out of Egypt] (Exodus 12:37-38).
Emmanuel Levinas was profoundly affected by the Holocaust, the quintessential experience of Otherness. His “ethics as first philosophy” — the wisdom of love, rather than the love of wisdom — compels us to recognize the transcendence and heteronomy of the Other; put another way: to see humanity in the face of the Other. This itself entails moral obligation: “The being that expresses itself imposes itself, but does so precisely by appealing to me with its destitution and nudity — its hunger — without my being able to be deaf to that appeal… The face opens the primordial discourse whose first word is obligation” (Totality and Infinity, pp. 200-201).
Philosophically and psychologically there is a straight line from Pharaoh’s depersonalization of the Israelites, whom he views as a nameless, faceless, swarm of insects that threatens Egypt, to modern genocides, such as the Armenians, Cambodians, Hutus, and Bosnians; indeed to all the genocidal atrocities throughout history. Such savagery is possible when people drive God out of their minds and lives, and ignore God’s moral imperatives. Levinas teaches us that the Other is no less than a reflection of God: “In the face the Other expresses his eminence, the dimension of height and divinity from which he descends” (Totality and Infinity, p. 262).
Lest we stop at condemning those who perpetrate mass slaughter, Levinas’ teaching applies on a far smaller and nearer scale. How often do we turn away from the pain of others because we’re “busy,” or “running late,” or “it’s not our business,” or they are “someone else’s problem”? What clouds our view and prevents us from realizing Torah’s ideal? On one end of a spectrum of possibilities is ego; at the other end is insecurity. We begin our Pesach preparations by cleaning the chametz out of our drawers and cabinets, but also from our hearts and minds. We begin the seder by opening our doors to all who are in want, all who are in need. Could the message be any clearer? As Torah and Levinas teach us, our obligation is to see in the face of the Other the reflection of the Divine.
Rabbi Amy Scheinerman Baltimore, MD
The Orchard Spring 2013 - Nissan 5773 41 ISRAEL AT 65 Rabbi Amy Scheinerman
Even as we celebrate the State of Israel’s countless accomplishments, and debate her politics, many Jews today struggle with Israel’s religious significance. The reestablishment of a sovereign Jewish state in the land of our ancestors is stunning — both from the perspective of the world’s acquiescence through the Partition Plan, and our people’s ability to make it happen — reversing a long history of powerlessness. Is it an astonishing historical event? Is it a miracle of divine proportion? Is the State reishit tz’mikhat ge’ulateinu, the first flowering of our redemption? Is it the dawn of the messianic age?
Even before David Ben-Gurion declared the establishment of the State of Israel on May 14, 1948, Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook believed himself to be living at the atchalta de-ge’ula (beginning of redemption) on the basis of a teaching in B.Sanhedrin 98a: “R. Abba said: There is no more revealed sign of the redemption than that which is written: But you, O mountains of Israel, shall bear our fruit for My people Israel, for their return is near (Ezekiel 36:8).” But if the “beginning” preceded May 14, 1948, what is the religious meaning of the establishment of the State?
In some segments of the Jewish community, the tension is between human efforts to establish a sovereign Jewish state over and against the promise that God would establish it, based upon an unfortunate reading of the exchange between Rav Yehudah and R. Zeira in B.Ketubot 110b-111a. Reishit tz’mickhat ge’ulateinu is not even a consideration for them.
For the majority, however, it is a potent question. Among the many views of olam haba, we find that of Shmuel in Berakhot 34b: “There is no difference between our time and the messianic age except that in the future time, Am Yisrael will be free from subservience to other nations.” Shmuel’s perspective on slavery is encapsulated in the Pesach Haggadah where he pinpoints the beginning of slavery in Avadim Hayyinu, as opposed to Rav, who sees slavery as a spiritual state of mind, and locates its beginning in idolatry. Rambam concurs with Shmuel: redemption is a matter of physical and political freedom. Shmuel and Rambam would contend that May 14, 1948 marks atchalta de-ge’ula.
Many of us struggle with the implications of saying that the State of Israel is reishit tz’mikhat ge’ulateinu. It suggests that the modern State is atchalta de-ge’ula, the beginning of the fulfillment of the messianic promise, a distinctive and meaningful step in that direction. Over and against this view is the opinion that Israel came into being through sweat, blood, and good fortune, a fabulous accomplishment, but is not a sign of the ultimate redemption, an historical and political marvel, but not a messianic event.
But must we choose between historical political achievement, on the one hand, and messianic birth pangs, on the other? For Jews who affirm human agency through tikkun olam, the combination is a natural shidduch. Talmud teaches us:
One day R. Yehoshua b. Levi met Elijah standing by the entrance of R. Simeon b. Yochai’s tomb. He asked him: “Have I a portion in the world to come?” He replied, “If the Master desires it.” R. Yehoshua ben Levi asked, “…When will the Messiah come?” “Go and ask him himself,” Elijah replied. “Where is he to be found?” “At the entrance to the gates of Rome.” “And by what sign may I recognize him?” “He is sitting among the poor lepers: all of them untie [their bandages] all at once, and then re-bandage them together, whereas the messiah unties and re-bandages each [sore] separately, thinking, should I be wanted, I must not be delayed.” (B.Sanhedrin 98a)
The messiah is here? Under our very noses? The messiah’s presence — unobtrusive and unrecognized — is the ever- present possibility of redemption. Why does the messiah painstakingly unwrap one bandage at a time, attending to only one sore at a time? Perhaps it is because each sore attended to, however small, marks progress, and serves the ultimate goal, the healing process of redemption. It doesn’t happen all at once, but in small increments. We might have difficulty recognizing the significance of small events, but this does not diminish or negate their value.They send a ripple out into the universe, and every ripple moves us closer.
So R. Yehoshua b. Levi went to the messiah and greeted him, saying, “Peace upon you, Master and Teacher.” “Peace upon you, O son of Levi,” he replied. “When will you come, Master?” he asked, “Today,” the messiah answered.
The Orchard Spring 2013 - Nissan 5773 42 Today is always rife with possibility: for gemilut chasadim, tzedakah, and acts of healing that pave the messianic path. Is the messianic age dawning if we don’t recognize it as such? It doesn’t entirely matter. What matters is to walk the path. Whether each step is on this side of the timeline cut-off or the other doesn’t matter. It’s the direction that matters.
R. Yehoshua ben Levi thereupon returned to Elijah and Elijah inquired, “What did he say to you?” “Peace be upon you, O son of Levi,” he answered. Thereupon Elijah observed, “He thereby assured you and your father of a portion in the world-to-come.” “But he spoke falsely to me,” R. Yehoshua objected, “stating that he would come today, but he has not.” Elijah answered him, “This is what he said to you, Today, if you will hear his voice.”
It’s not the messiah or the messianic age we need to recognize: it’s the steps we take on the path. We can walk the walk regardless of whether the State of Israel is reishit tz’mikhat ge’ulateinu, and regardless of what precisely we think that means. Israel’s 65th anniversary is cause for celebration and rejoicing.
Rabbi Amy Scheinerman Baltimore, MD
The Orchard Spring 2013 - Nissan 5773 43 B’CHOL DOR VA-DOR IN EVERY GENERATION Rabbi Donald B. Rossoff
Assembled: In every generation, each Jew must look upon himself as though he, personally, was among those who went forth from Egypt. Not our fathers alone did the Holy One, Blessed be He, redeem from suffering, but also us and our families.
Leader: The struggle for freedom is a continuous struggle, For never does man reach total liberty and opportunity.
Assembled: In every age, some new freedom is won and established, Adding to the advancement of human happiness and security.
Leader: Yet, each age uncovers a formerly unrecognized servitude, Requiring new liberation to set man’s soul free.
Assembled: In every age, the concept of freedom grows broader, Widening the horizons for finer and nobler living.
Leader: Each generation is duty-bound to contribute to this growth, Else mankind’s ideals become stagnant and stationary.
Assembled: The events in Egypt were but the beginning Of a force in history which will forever continue.
Leader: In this spirit, we see ourselves as participants in the Exodus, For we must dedicate our energies to the cause there begun.
Assembled: In our day, we shall defend the heritage of liberty, Taught by the Torah, preserved by democracy, and secured by participation and sacrifice.
Rabbi Donald B. Rossoff Chair, Rabbinic Cabinet of MetroWest New Jersey
The Orchard Spring 2013 - Nissan 5773 44 YOM HA’ATZMAUT Rabbi Eric Polokoff
A short quiz.
• Who thinks about Israel about every day?
• Who thinks about Israel about every other day?
• Who thinks about Israel about once a week?
• Who thinks about Israel just when someone else mentions Israel?
• And who doesn’t think about Israel even when it’s brought up? Who zones out completely?
If we are honest… even in a Zionist synagogue, there’s a certain spectrum of focus on Israel, the Jewish homeland.
And this presents a special challenge. Some of us are immersed daily in numerous media sources. While, on the other hand, others here might only glimpse a headline, or pass something while channel or web surfing. Few of our religious school students… or their parents… subscribe to “The Daily Alert” or other such listings. So what should be said to all of us? A few distilled thoughts.
It’s an incredible tribute to Israel and its supporters that Israel exists. It certainly reaffirms my faith. For the more you know of Zionism’s history, the more you realize that things could have turned out otherwise – there have been many precarious moments.
Nor can we take Israel for granted now. No other nation on earth has to deal with the type of unremitting hostility that Israel faces. Enemies are not shy about expressing their desire to wipe Israel off the map. So too, debate swells around boycotting Israel and Israeli products. Though there’s a certain hypocrisy at work in that even the would-be boycotters don’t have the real courage of their convictions. They seek to boycott produce or cultural events – not the advances in medicine, science and technology that are also born in Israel. Apparently, boycotting hummus is one thing, abandoning Israeli-engineered software is another.
As such, all who have helped and do support Israel are deserving of praise and our encouragement. Their efforts are a statement of hope and resolve, and an appreciation of the awesome.
It’s also worth mentioning that Israel is increasingly home to the world’s Jews. Israel’s Jewish population is growing – ours is not. Beyond Israel and the US, the number of Jews across the globe soon become very small. Therefore, if you care about sustaining a Jewish presence in the world, Israel truly matters.
Some argue that the lives of those Jews in Israel would be improved – and they would no longer face existential threats – if Israel wasn’t any longer a Jewish state. Not true. When Jews and Arabs lived in Palestine under Ottoman or British rule, the Arabs continually sought to limit Jewish immigration and minimize the Jewish presence.
Sometimes we may want to avoid thinking about Israel’s circumstances because they appear so intractable: another challenge, another woe. But the reality is this: without a Jewish state, Jews would be far more imperiled. Where could the Jews go? Back to Iraq or Egypt or Syria, from where they had to flee for their lives? ouldW America take everyone in? We’re not always as hospitable as the poem on the Statue of Liberty suggests.
The Orchard Spring 2013 - Nissan 5773 45 Israel is now the same age the United States was in 1841. In a short span of time Israel’s people have created an amazing culture and society. It guarantees free speech, freedom of religion, rights for women, for gays and lesbians, and the like. It’s disproportionately represented on many indexes – Nobel prize winners, scientific papers, start-up companies and the like. Israel is a global leader in being green, something especially important as we consider a future of more limited natural resources. Israel plants trees, uses solar power and re-uses water. It’s the only country in the world that is reversing desertification, the encroaching desert.
Returning to my quiz, I know that many of us lead very busy lives, with numerous interests. Yet whatever has been our typical personal interest prior, now is the time to wish Israel a Happy 65th.
Rabbi Eric Polokoff B’nai Israel of Southbury Southbury, CT
The Orchard Spring 2013 - Nissan 5773 46 REFLECTIONS Rabbi Barry Gelman
“If an expert says it can’t be done, get another expert” – David Ben Gurion
Uncertainty. It is often in the space of uncertainty that real leadership emerges.
Dueling midrashic accounts depicting the moments right before the Jewish people walked through the Sea of Reads allows us to analyze one specific aspect of leadership.
The Midrash (Mechilta to Exodus 14:21) teaches that according to Rabbi Meir, when the Children of Israel stood at the foot of the sea the tribes began to argue as to who would be the first to descend into the water.
The same Midrash continues to offer Rabbi Yehuda’s view who teaches that each of the tribes declared “we will not descend into the water first...” the Midrash continues, stating that while the tribes we arguing Nachshon BenAminadav jumped into the water.
It is interesting to note that each of these accounts uses a different chapter of Psalms as a proof text.
Rabbi Meir quotes verses from Psalms 68, a chapter that speaks of the certainty of God’s salvation.
A sampling of verses from that chapter illustrates the upbeat and confident mood of the composer.
2. Let God arise, let his enemies be scattered; let those who hate him flee before him. 6. A father to the orphans, and a judge to the widows, is God in his holy habitation. 20. Blessed be the Lord, who daily bears our burden, the God of our salvation. Selah. 22. But God will strike the head of his enemies, and the hairy scalp of him who still goes on in his trespasses.
On the other hand, Rabbi Yehuda uses verses from Psalms chapter 69, a chapter depicting uncertainty and fear.
For example:
2. Save me, O God; for the waters have come up to my soul. 3. I sink in deep mire, where there is no standing; I have come into deep waters, and the flood sweeps over me. 5. Those who hate me without cause are more than the hairs of my head; those who would destroy me, who are my enemies wrongfully, are mighty. What I did not steal, must I restore?
Rabbi Meir, who portrays the Children of Israel as willing to plunge into the sea, is referring to a moment when they felt supremely confident that there would be a positive outcome. In such a case, it is easy to understand why they’re was widespread desire to move forward and even to be the first.
In contract to that, Rabbi Yehuda is describing a situation of doubt and lack of complete certainty in a positive outcome. It is in that case that Nachshon grabs the reigns of leadership and dives into the water.
The end of the Midrash brings this point home when it teaches, in the name of Rabbi Tarfon, that Nachshon’s tribe, Judah merited to be the tribe from where Kings of Israel will come.
Rabbi Yehuda is teaching us that the willingness to be the first, to take on an important cause, even when the outcome is far from certain, is how history is made.
No doubt, being the first of many willing parties is praiseworthy, but it does not compare to ability to be the “one”.
When I study this Midrash, I can’t help but think about the founders of Medinat Yisrael and the early supporters of Zionism. These were men and women, standing at the foot of the sea, who were willing to plod ahead and devote their lives to an enterprise that they were not certain would succeed.
The Orchard Spring 2013 - Nissan 5773 47 They were the rebirth of the Nachshon type leader among and thereby merited to bring about the rebirth of the Jewish homeland and Jewish people.
Yom Ha’atzmaut is our opportunity to thank them and those who came after them who remain dedicated to Medinat Yisrael.
It is also a time for us to glean inspiration so that we too can take up important causes, causes that may not come with guaranteed success, but that call on us and need.
*The Analysis on the Midrash and the related verses from Psalms is from an article written by Rabbi Yechezkel Kufeld of Yeshivat Birkat Moshe in Ma’ale Adumim – available here - http://www.birkatmoshe.org.il/Hebrew/LessonArticle. aspx?item=4197
Rabbi Barry Gelman United Orthodox Synagogues of Houston Houston, TX
The Orchard Spring 2013 - Nissan 5773 48 SINAI SPEAKS Rabbi Nicole Guzik
More than any other Jewish holiday, I associate Passover with images of home. We clean out our refrigerators and prepare our kitchens. Family and friends engage in the Seder, singing, praying and laughing--all sitting around a dining room table. We listen to our children chant the four questions, all from the comfort of the living room.
There is something special in knowing that in hundreds of thousands of homes during Passover night, families are retelling our story—the tales of the Jewish people. Unlike so many that have come before us, we have the luxury of sitting comfortably, remembering that the ability to publicly ask our questions and recite our prayers is a relatively new phenomenon. In essence, home becomes the quintessential symbol of freedom.
In 1981, a Haggadah was published in South Africa entitled, Am Yisrael Chai (The people of Israel live.) Carole Balin, professor of Jewish history at Hebrew Union College explains that this particular Haggadah “is a paean to the State of Israel, represented in its pages as the embodiment of the undying spirit of the Jewish people.” With a seven branched menorah embossed on each page, the Haggadah reminds the reader that as safe as home may feel, it can just as easily be taken away. We end our Seder meal shouting “Next year in Jerusalem” because by doing so, we declare that this year, next year, and long into the future—the Jewish people will continue to tell our story. We promise to never forsake our homeland, nor the freedom that our homes represent.
No matter the Haggadah we use, it is understood. We are a people that value the asking of questions, the sharing of memories, the transmission of recipes, anecdotes and traditions. On Pesach, with every word we utter, let us not take this freedom for granted.
May we remember, “There is no place like home.”
Chag Sameach - Have a happy, reflective Passover,
Rabbi Nicole Guzik Sinai Temple Los Angeles, CA
The Orchard Spring 2013 - Nissan 5773 49 REFLECTIONS Rabbi Asher Ostrin
Passover is in many ways the holiday of FSU Jewry. Its message resonates for the Jews in that part of the world unlike anywhere else. The themes of slavery and freedom, of the promise of spring after a long winter of misery and oppression, mean much more to those who experienced life behind the Iron Curtain and then witnessed the USSR’s collapse, than to those who have known freedom all of their lives. Even today we hear older Jews tell of what matzah meant to them in the dark years when it was (often inexplicably) available: Of waiting patiently in line outside local synagogues with other Jews to get their kilo of matzah, of actually tasting the bread of freedom, closing their eyes as they did so, and imagining how perhaps one day they too would experience redemption. Often, older Jews speak with tears in their eyes of how, during those few days during the year, by touching the matzah, and then tasting it, they were reconnected to their roots and memories of seders with their grandparents, even as they were supremely aware that their fellow Jews around the world, at this very moment, were sharing this very same experience. Eating Matzah was one of the few demonstrable Jewish acts that was not expressly forbidden, and it bound each of them to the Jewish People worldwide.
A vignette of Passover in our early days of FSU work:
As Jews began to identify, we knew that holiday celebrations were particularly meaningful to them. If libraries and books appealed to their intellect, and welfare services began to address their physical needs, we were constantly on the lookout for things that would encourage them to engage in, and nurture their Jewish identities through experience and emotions. Reclaiming the Jewish calendar became a priority for them, and therefore for JDC. We sent hanukiyyot and shofarot, graggers and candles. And we sent in people who could help plan holiday events in the early days. It was community organizing at its best.
Passover seders were the highlight of those early communal celebrations. They were not elaborate events- a hall was rented, food prepared by volunteers, children learned songs, and the turnouts were massive. Elderly Jews who still had memories of sitting at their grandparents’ seders, together with the next two generations of their families together discovering, or rediscovering, a common heritage.
In the early 90’s we joined together with the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Foundation and Hillel International, to found Hillels in the FSU. The students embodied all that was special about FSU Jewry during this period: enthusiastic, creative, and determined. While many of their parents made tentative moves into communal Jewish life, attending an occasional program, and often educating themselves in the privacy of their own homes, the younger people had no inhibitions. They were not ashamed of what they didn’t know- that was meaningful only as a catalyst to learn more. When it came to Jewish life, they may not have been familiar with the fine points of ritual, or the proper pronunciation of the liturgy, but those were minor details. To be a Jew was to live as a Jew, to experience, and not just to observe and “learn about”. Inviting them (instead of foreigners) to organize and lead communal Seders did not intimidate them at all. Instead, it was a challenge. They were prepared to devote their time and energy to learn how to do it, and then to create the environment appropriate for this event in each city, town and village where they were welcome.
The specific story today is about Sasha and Luda, two Hillel students in Ukraine who accepted the task of creating a Seder in a small town in the northern part of the country. They attended two week long seminars to prepare them, and they were “ready to roll”. Whatever they lacked in knowledge they made up in enthusiasm.
Luda had been to her first Seder the previous year. She was raised knowing that she was a Jew, but the term was essentially devoid of any significance. Other than a stamp on her internal passport, there was nothing that distinguished her from her neighbors. She came to Hillel for the first time by accident. Literally. She fell on the street in front of the rented hall where Hillel was holding an event and was brought inside to sit down and catch her breath. A few questions later she was smitten, and Hillel became a central part of her life.
The Orchard Spring 2013 - Nissan 5773 50 Sasha had never been to a Seder. In fact, he was only told that he was a Jew when he was 19 years old. His parents were hesitant about identifying publicly as Jews, as they were still skeptical that the post-Soviet openness, then in its infancy, would be sustained. Somehow he became aware of his roots, became connected, and volunteered with Luda to run one of the communal Seders.
Four days before Seder night they came to the chosen town. It had an estimated 700 Jews. Sasha and Luda hoped to attract between 150-175 Jews to the Seder. Others told them they were overly optimistic, but they were undeterred. They came with some money to rent a hall and buy some Seder staples, and brought along about 150 haggadot in Hebrew and Russian. The first order of business was to rent space to accommodate a crowd.
In the center of the town there was a large building that was a local art school. It had a basement hall that was perfect for the Seder, along with tables and chairs. One of the school’s staff explained to them that the building was the local Communist Party headquarters just four years previous, hence it was outfitted so well. When the Soviet Union disbanded, the Rada, the Ukranian Parliament, outlawed the Communist Party. That accounted for the building’s transformation.
Sasha and Luda worked hard to prepare. They hung posters advertising the event and inviting local Jews. They taught some children Passover songs. They decorated the hall.
Seder night. Advertisements called for a 7 pm beginning. By 6:15, the 168 seats were taken. And people kept coming. And coming. By 7:00, there were more than 300 people squeezed into the hall, and disappointed people in the hallways throughout the building. (Fire “regulations” were related to in those days as advisory rather than compulsory).
The two Hillel students began the Seder, and barely stopped for air. During their explanations there was not a sound in the room. This was punctuated with boisterous singing, mostly without words which were anyway unfamiliar. Wine. Questions. Eggs. Saltwater. Matzah. All went off without a hitch.
The meal itself was quite modest, but no one had come for the food. After the meal, Sasha gave a short explanation of the fifth cup of wine, known as the Cup of Elijah. He explained its folk derivation, and how Elijah was to be the harbinger of the messianic era. He spoke a bit about the Jewish notion of that period, and Jewish history as a linear concept always moving towards a better end, as opposed to the circular, repetitive concept of history of the Greeks.
When he finished there was a stirring in the back of the room. An older man stood up and pointed his finger at Sasha and began to speak to him in a very agitated way. Under other circumstances he would have been quieted by the others, but his jacket was full of medals. He was clearly a war hero, and therefore entitled to a modicum of respect despite his rude interruption.
Wagging his finger, he said to Sasha: “Now you’ve lost us. You’ve simply gone too far. Until now, this whole evening brought back wonderful memories to me. I closed my eyes every few minutes and remembered the Seders of my childhood. My grandfather led it in Hebrew, and explained it all to us in Yiddish. I remember the melodies and the smells. It’s been almost 80 years, but it was like yesterday. And your explanations were wonderful. Slavery. Freedom. Spring. All wonderful. But what is this nonsense about a Messiah? And a ‘messianic’ era? You’ve gone too far. You can’t prove any of that. It’s all a bunch of nonsense. Made up. Fantasy. You lost me. And I bet you lost a lot of others here. Stick to history and Tradition. Leave the make believe out.”
Again, silence in the room. I would expect that most people felt sorry for these two young people who clearly had invested so much in making the evening memorable. In one moment, the good will and positive feelings hung in the balance. This was a test. And a patently unfair one. Age and experience were working against Sasha and Luda . As was the setting: All eyes were now fixed on them. There was a slight pause. And then Sasha spoke. Slowly and respectfully.
The Orchard Spring 2013 - Nissan 5773 51 “You’re right. This business about the Messiah, and the messianic era, can’t be empirically proven. And yes, it does require a leap of faith, or at least imagination, to embrace it. But I want to ask you about another fantasy, another leap of faith. One that perhaps for you and me was even more farfetched than this one.
Imagine that you and I had walked down this street together 5 years ago. We would have passed this building. It’s the most prominent building in town. And covering the façade of the top floor is a large stone circle, with a hammer and sickle at its center. You and I would have stopped to admire the building. And then I would have said to you: ‘I know this will be hard to believe- but five years from now, in the basement of this building, in this Communist Party Headquarters, our community will hold a public Seder. A Seder! It will be publicized so that everyone in town will know that it’s going to happen. And hundreds of Jews are going to come out. And two young Jews will lead the Seder. And Jewish children will sing. And families will learn together and experience Jewish Tradition. Not secretly and rushed. But proudly in a public place. And not any public place – in the building that represented our oppressors – the great and powerful Soviet Union.”
Sasha paused a moment to let it all sink in. And then he continued, still in a very respectful manner, looking straight at his challenger:
“Now I ask you: That scenario and the scenario about the messianic era- which strikes you as more outlandish and improbable?”
Absolute silence. The Seder concluded with the singing of Am Yisrael Chai- a kind of anthem of the Soviet Jewry protest movement that speaks to the eternity of the Jewish People.
That seder experience will be repeated next week, this time in JCCs and Hesed buildings, and schools and synagogues throughout the FSU.
Twenty years on we risk taking the wonder of this enterprise for granted. Passover is the time to remember that we should not.
Rabbi Asher Ostrin Senior Executive for JDC International Affairs
The Orchard Spring 2013 - Nissan 5773 52 THE MATZAH OF PEACE (To be read as a supplement to the explanation of Matzah found in your Haggadah) Rabbi Neal I. Borovitz
Avadim Hayinu
Not only were we slaves to the Pharaoh of Egypt, We have also been enslaved and persecuted by other Pharaohs.
Among these Pharaohs of every age were the Kings of Babylonia, the Emperors of Greece and Rome, the Churchmen and Nobles of Medieval Spain, Hitler and his Nazi followers, the Pharaohs of Moscow, and the dictators, potentates and terrorists of the contemporary Arab world.
The Babylonian exile was followed by a return to Zion; The Hellenistic domination by the Maccabean victory; The expulsion from Spain by the tolerance first in Turkey and Holland and then, ultimately, by the birth of an American Jewish community. Hitler, the Pharaoh of Auschwitz, whose acts of Genocide surpassed the sins of all the other enemies in history: Even he we survived.
Yet redemption is not complete. Israel’s extended hand of peace has still not been grasped by the Palestinians. The Iranian president Ahmadinejad, the modern day successor to Haman, denies the Holocaust and joins with Hamas and Hezbollah in calling for the destruction of Israel.
“Sinat Chinam,” the hatred between Jews of differing religious streams, remains a cancer threatening the body and soul of the Jewish people.
The hungry and the homeless here in America are calling out to us on this Passover to make good on the Haggadah’s promise: Let all who are hungry come and eat.
The Matzah we eat tonight is both the bread of affliction and the symbol of redemption. For 30 years we added a fourth Matzah to the Seder Plate, calling it the Matzah for Soviet Jewry.
Tonight, 25 years after the opening of the iron curtain that separated the Jews of the Soviet Union from the rest of the Jewish People we celebrate their liberation and the Exodus of 1.8 million Jews. However, we must still set aside this Matzah for their redemption is not complete. In Ukrainian cities such as Kiev and Lavov as well as in Moscow and St. Petersburg people especially teenagers and young adults are discovering for the first time their Jewish roots and seeking to take their places among in the world wide Jewish community. Many are choosing Aliyah to Israel and others are seeking to rebuild Jewish life.
May this Matzah, which we will set aside tonight, be a reminder to us of our continued responsibility to support the efforts of all Jews who desire to make Aliyah to live in Israel. May this Matzah also remind us to support through our Federation funded programs of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee the re-creation of Jewish life in the Former Soviet Union for those Jews who freely choose to live Jewish lives in the land of their birth and birthplace of their ancestors and ours.
On this Passover night let us also vow to stand in solidarity with Israel as she seeks a secure peace with her Arab neighbors. Let us vow to work for better understanding between and cooperation among Jews of differing religious streams, and also take an oath to show our support of the State of Israel both through personal pilgrimage and political support.
Avadim Hayinu - Tonight we remember that we have been slaves.
Ata B’nai Horim - Now, we are the children of freedom.
May the year ahead bring freedom and security; peace and prosperity to all.
Rabbi Neal I. Borovitz Temple Israel Riber Edge, NJ
The Orchard Spring 2013 - Nissan 5773 53 ISRAEL ACTION NETWORK SPRING INFORMATION MATERIAL
The Israel Action Network (IAN), a project of The Jewish Federations of North America, in partnership with the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, recently released the first-of-its-kind publication, IAN FACTs: Countering the Assault on Israel’s Legitimacy. This compilation of 14 case studies provides the North American Jewish community with new, adaptable and proactive strategies based on best practices developed by leading community professionals to offer unprecedented insight into overcoming attempts to undermine Israel’s legitimacy.
Contributions to IAN FACTs cover a wide range of cases worldwide, ranging from London, to Seattle and South Africa, which took place within a variety of settings including Mainline Protestant churches, food coops and college campuses, among others.
“IAN FACTs was compiled to respond to a growing demand from across North America and the globe to examine and share effective strategies for countering assaults on Israel’s legitimacy, including boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) attempts and other campaigns,” said IAN Managing Director Geri Palast. “These strategies were forged on many different fronts, including divestment resolutions within mainline Protestant Churches and labor unions, anti-Israel activity online, annual Israeli Apartheid Week activities on college campuses and boycotts targeting Israeli goods and services. This publication represents a significant compilation of experience and collective success that has resulted from hard work and thoughtful organizing in our communities.”
IAN FACTs highlights several key findings. First, advocacy must be nuanced to move beyond point-counterpoint issues and address the human concerns of Israelis and their neighbors. Additionally, it stresses the need to not only provide the right message, but also the right messengers who will speak authentically to the audiences in question. Moving forward, IAN FACTs calls on communities to establish strategic outreach plans for building relationships and understanding so that they will have the tools necessary to counter acts of delegitimization as they arise. Finally the case studies call for a new way of thinking that will broaden the “mainstream” to counter the extreme, creating a wide and deep network for constructive action. To download IAN FACTS click here: IAN FACTs: Countering the Assault on Israel’s Legitimacy
Based on these lessons learned and ongoing analysis of trends, issues and audiences, IAN will provide communities with the necessary messages, strategies and materials to effectively counter delegitimization. Many of these go-to resources will be hosted online on IAN’s new website at www.IsraelActionNetwork.org.
We hope you will find this material helpful in working to educate your congregants about the BDS movement and the danger it poses to Israel.
The Orchard Spring 2013 - Nissan 5773 54 BaBy Help: Securing tHe Future oF argentina’S youngeSt JewS
As Jewish communities worldwide prepare for Passover’s “early” arrival this year, learn how JDC is bolstering young families grappling with Argentina’s financial flux and enabling them to celebrate Pesach surrounded by community.
The Orchard Spring 2013 - Nissan 5773 55 For Cynthia and her husband, supporting their sons Isaac, 5, and Lisandro, 10 months, and their 9-year- old niece is a struggle each and every day. The five of them live in a tiny one-bedroom apartment in Buenos Aires and depend on the Jewish community for help with food, clothing, and rent payments. Cynthia says it’s thanks to the warm and nurturing environment at JDC’s Baby Help daycare center that Isaac and Lisandro have flourished.
This young mother knows well the safety net that JDC has provided her family. When her own parents lost everything in Argentina’s financial crisis a decade ago, JDC gave her a scholarship to continue her university studies. And when she was forced to leave school to take on a job and the care of her hospi- talized sister’s children, JDC was there. Today, with Baby Help’s continued support and encouragement, Cynthia is ready to complete her studies as a social worker and secure a better future for her family.
For hundreds of struggling families, JDC’s Baby Help program provides the vital support they need to survive in Baby Help services include: the face of persistent unemployment and stubbornly high • baby formula and vitamins inflation in the cost of basic goods and services. Andit includes something more—a nurturing environment that • basic foods ensures a family’s financial challenges don’t alienate them • medicines and essential vaccinations from the Jewish community, but rather draw them in for • diapers, baby equipment, and clothing Jewish engagement and connection. • parental counseling One hallmark of this is “Baby” celebrations of Shabbat and • guidance on health and good nutrition holidays throughout the year. • full-time day care services Preparations are underway for this year’s “Baby Pesaj” (Baby Passover)—a hands-down favorite that brings kids, Baby Help strengthens families’ ties to the their extended families, and residents of the Buenos Aires Jewish community by providing support for community’s LeDor VaDor senior citizens’ home (which Brit Milah, Simchat Bat, and other lifecycle houses the Baby Help Center) together each year for a celebrations; and it enables children and Seder with all the trimmings. The little ones play holiday families to participate in community games and sing songs they’ve learned in the weeks leading up to Pesach, while the adults take part in the reading of the activities and Jewish holiday programs. Haggadah and seniors recall past celebrations.
The innovative intergenerational arrangement between Baby Help and LeDor VaDor has fostered a remarkable and mutually rewarding interaction between young and old, who share gardening, crafts, and other activities as well as these holiday programs. The children gain much-needed affection and nurturing, and seniors have found new www.JDC.org purpose and vitality in their adopted “grandparenting” role.
“We are so grateful for the assistance Baby Help provides,” The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) is the world’s leading Jewish humanitarian assistance organization. JDC works in more says Cynthia. “But above all, we thank the Baby Help orga- than 70 countries and in Israel to alleviate hunger and hardship, rescue nizers for the joy we feel in having matzah on the table and Jews in danger, create lasting connections to Jewish life, and provide immediate relief and long-term development support for victims of being able to celebrate Passover once again.” natural and man-made disasters.
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THE JEWISH AGENCY FOR ISRAEL - GREECE’S JEWS LOOK TO ISRAEL
The Jewish community in Greece dates back to the 4th century BCE, when Alexander the Great conquered the Kingdom of Judea. As recently as 1902, Jews comprised half the population of the Greek city of Salonika. The Holocaust decimated Greek Jewry, yet the remaining community remained cohesive and strong. Currently, 5,000 members remain of Greece’s Jewish community, most of who live in Athens and Salonika. While ardently Zionist, Greek Jewry has not made Aliyah in significant numbers relative to its size. But that may soon change.
With an economy cratering before their eyes, a frightening uptick in anti-Semitic incidents, and dwindling opportunities for Jewish living—a growing number of young Jewish adults in Greece are considering a permanent move to the Jewish homeland.
Many Jewish Greeks are concerned that the high unemployment rate there (which currently hovers at 27%) will trigger an increase in anti-Semitic incidents that “blame the Jew” for the financial crisis. One such incident occurred in January when the American Jewish Committee’s David Harris paid a visit to Greece. Golden Dawn, the neo-Nazi party there, released a statement saying the purpose of Harris’ visit was to safeguard the interests of “international loan sharksand those who possess most of the international wealth.” The publicized statement went on to say that these loan sharks “belong to a certain race, which presents itself as a victim, while in reality it is the perpetrator. Everyone knows that they are none other than those pulling the strings behind the marionettes. They are the absolute evil for mankind.”
In the meantime, is working to accommodate the anticipated wave of immigration. It has posted a shaliach in Athens and has allocated more than $1 million for Israel education and Hebrew instruction, thanks to funding from Keren Heyesod-United Israel Appeal, Montreal Federation CJA and the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews.
“We're not talking about thousands here, but compared to what we had in the past from Greece, this is a big jump,” said Shay Felber, The Jewish Agency’s Deputy Director General for Community Services.
Over the long term, Jews in Greece who are struggling to get by financially and to feel safe in their country could be influenced by reports from recent olim like 31-year-old Matityahu Mizan . “I felt like I got on a flight, went to sleep and woke up at home,” said Mazin, who holds a master’s degree in logistics and supply-chain management. After his pay was slashed by 30%, following Greece’s crumbling economy, Aliyah became a viable option for him. Mizan said that he was worried about a Jewish future in Greece, where many of his Jewish friends intermarried; where he could no longer find a kosher restaurant; and where Golden Dawn won 18 seats in the 2012 Greek parliamentary elections.
“I feel like I have found myself in Israel,” Mizan said. “For me, this is freedom." Mizan currently attends the Jewish Agency’s Ulpan Sapir in Ra’anana, where he shares an apartment with olim from France, Germany and Venezuela.
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