Beth Israel Congregation March - April 2020 Adar - Iyar 5780 Issue #4 HASHALIACH Hamantaschen Road: A Beatles-Inspired Purim Monday, March 9 Come in your Bring your favorite Beatles mac & cheese character costume! groggers! A transformative prayer leader and musician, BIRS 4th & 5th Grade Spiel Deborah Sacks Mintz has served innovative institutions . around the country as a teacher of Torah and communal Jewish music. As the Community Singing Consultant of Dinner - $12 per person ages 13 and up. Children Hadar’s Rising Song Institute, Deborah combines musical ages 12 and under are covered by Rav Nadav. Menu scholarship and practice to cultivate the grassroots includes falafel, sabich, humus, tehina, Israeli musical and spiritual creativity of the Jewish people. salad, pizza burekas, and spinach burekas! Join Deborah Sacks Mintz at 5:45 p.m. on Friday, Register using the link at www.bethisrael-aa.org March 20, for “Niggun Preparation: New Melodies and Singing as a Spiritual Process” to get us spiritually by Thursday, March 5. prepared for Shabbat. Then stay for an uplifting and participatory Kabbalat Shabbat service followed by a community Shabbat dinner at 7 p.m. To signup for dinner, Maariv use the link on the Beth Israel homepage 7:00 p.m. (www.bethisrael-aa.org). At 7:45 p.m., Deborah will lead a session entitled “Soulful Tisch: Creating a Sacred Space Megillah Reading - Join us for the Megillah Through Communal Singing” Together we will explore interspersed with popular Beatles tunes singing as a spiritual practice, utilizing both new tunes and of course…HAMANTASCHEN! Bring your mac & and old favorites. cheese for groggers and then donate them to Food During Shabbat services on Saturday, March 21, Gatherers. Don’t forget your checkbook or cash for Deborah will lead the community in spirited davening, teaching new melodies along the way. After kiddush, she Matanaot L’Evyonim, Gifts to the Poor, collected by the Social Action Committee. (Cont’d, See Deborah Sacks Mintz on Page 2) TO OUR CONGREGANTS Deborah's degrees in music and religious anthropology are from the University of Michigan! In addition to A Message from composing new Jewish music and teaching nation-wide, she regularly performs and records with a wide range of Rabbi Nadav Caine musicians and ensembles. Her debut album of original spiritual music, From The Narrow to the Expanse, will be released this year. This March weekend of soulful prayer follows upon From Niggunim to a Folk-Blues Seder our February “Simon & Garfunkel” Shabbat of curated Imagine you're walking through Jerusalem on Erev songs connected to Jewish liturgy, and will be followed Shabbat. Out of the tall narrow window of a stone in April and May by my Folk-Blues Musical Vegetarian building you hear wafting on the breeze a wordless Second Seder and our May Motown Shabbat. We melody, a niggun. At first you're not sure if it's an continue the musical communal prayer experimentations individual singing to themselves as they prepare for of our ancestors, and hopefully we break open our hearts Shabbos, but then you hear two or three voices join in, to God and to each other in the process. as if joining in spontaneous sympathy, one heart to another. As you walk nearer, preparing to pass the (Deborah Sacks Mintz cont’d from page 1) building, you hear a chorus, as one voice, what must be a crowded room full of people, all together singing will lead a session called “Music as a Source of Comfort ya-dahy-dahy-dahy, rising and falling like the breathing and Strength, Power and Struggle: A Text-Based of a single organism, the kehillah. By the time you round Exploration” in which we will spend Shabbat afternoon the bend, and the sounds recede, you can make out studying the intersection of music and spirituality in words to a Kabbalat Shabbat psalm... which one, you're traditional Jewish texts. Sources explored include Biblical, not quite sure, but it sounds like the Jewish people are Rabbinic, and Mystical works. After minchah at 7 p.m., one voice, singing to itself as it prepares for Shabbos. join Deborah for a light reception and Melava Malka at So many of us have had our lives changed by this 7:30 p.m. and bid farewell to Shabbat in song and keep the experience, and so many of us crave to share it with those ruach going with an evening of spiritual music. who haven't yet experienced it. We have created our Finally, on Sunday, March 22, at 10:00 a.m. Deborah home minyanim, found our retreat centers, and sought to will teach “Leading from the Center: A Davening find this unity through voice and music in shul, as our Leadership Workshop.” Looking to hone your skills as a original liturgy, the Book of Psalms, calls us to do. davening leader? Never led before, but would like to learn? Music and song rising from the heart and unifying a Interested in contributing to empowered davening as a Jewish community is a core part of who we are. In member of the kahal? Deborah will guide learners in an different places, in different generations, Jewish exploration of technical skills, as well as strategies for communities and song-leaders rise to the call. effectively building and sustaining community through In America today, the leading incubator of this form davening. This masterclass for daveners and shelichei of Jewish expression is The Rising Song Institute of Hadar. tzibbur of all levels, both experienced and novice! During the entire weekend of March 20th and 21st, the The Rosenberg Lecture Series is endowed through a rising superstar of the Rising Song Institute, Deborah generous contribution by Vic & Val Rosenberg in memory Sacks Mintz, will be our biannual Rosenberg Scholar-in- of Cantor Alfred & Alice Rosenberg. For more details on Residence at Beth Israel Congregation. The Rosenberg this inspiring weekend, visit the Beth Israel website at Lecture Series is funded and endowed through a www.bethisrael-aa.org. generous contribution by Victor and Valerie Rosenberg in memory of Cantor Alfred and Alice Rosenberg. Intro to Judaism with Rav Nadav A transformative prayer leader, musician, and educator, Deborah Sacks Mintz serves innovative Sundays, March 1 and 29, and April 19 institutions around the country as a teacher of Torah and Though directed at people who are considering empowered connective prayer. conversion, this serious examination of the main A Wexner Graduate Fellow and Marshall T. Meyer dimensions of Judaism – from mysticism to Talmud, to Rabbinic Fellow at B'nai Jeshurun in New York City, Jewish Holidays and rituals – is open to anyone who wants Deborah is also a rabbinical candidate at the Jewish to deepen their Jewish literacy. Theological Seminary. So special to our community, Page 2 TO OUR CONGREGANTS BOARD OF DIRECTORS BOB BLUMENTHAL President President’s Perspective 846-1649 [email protected] Bob Blumenthal RUTH KRAUT Executive Vice President 649-2401 [email protected] Dear fellow Beth Israel congregants, STEVE GERBER Once again, I’m writing a column that refers to holidays 1-2 months in the future. As I Vice President of Finance 973-1651 write while looking at my snow-buried back yard, I need to think about Purim (March 9) and [email protected] Pesach (April 8). I wish you all chagim s’meichim (happy holidays) in advance. DEBORAH BALL Education Vice President Presidents 972-4793 By the time you read this, I’ll have about 100 days left in my term as Board president [email protected] (not that I’m counting). This doesn’t give me much time to thank former Beth Israel MIRIAM GREENBERG presidents, before such thanks from me seem a bit self-serving. I now have deeper insight Programs Vice President than ever into the effort involved in the presidency, while recognizing that much of what 994-0324 [email protected] any president achieves is based on the work of board and committee members, rabbis, and JESSAMYN RESSLER- staffs, not to mention the advice and forbearance of family members. MAERLENDER For my part, and on behalf of the Congregation to which many of them still contribute Membership Vice President effort, ideas, and even funds, I would like to thank all of the former presidents of Beth Israel. 418-2785 [email protected] Those whom we are fortunate to still have with us include (chronologically): HARRIET BAKALAR Treasurer ● Marty Sichel, who was born in Germany, came to the U.S. in 1937, is Professor Emeritus 646-4639 in aeronautical engineering at Michigan, and is a Fellow of The Institute of Aeronautics [email protected] and Astronautics; CAREY WEXLER SHERMAN ● Saul Hymans, who is Professor Emeritus and former chair of Economics and Statistics at Communications Secretary (612) 220-5529 Michigan, was a member of the Board of Directors of the National Bureau of Economic [email protected] Research, and is the first person to have twice won the Blue Chip Annual Economic AARON WILLIS Forecasting Award; Recording Secretary ● Carl Cohen, who is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Michigan, was a co-founder of (202) 744-1444 UM’s Residential College, the founder and a director of the Program in Human Values [email protected] in Medicine at Michigan’s Medical School, and was a member of the National Board of MEMBERS AT LARGE Directors of the American Civil Liberties Union and member of the Labor Panel of the ROBIN AXELROD American Arbitration Association; 395-9864 [email protected] ● Paul Lichter, who is a Professor Emeritus of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences at CORRY BUCKWALTER Michigan, Founding Director of Michigan’s Kellogg Eye Center, and was the 100th