SYNABLOG: Temple Emanuel of Beverly Hills

"A 'Regular' Tuesday Morning" by Cantor Yonah Kliger

It was a regular Tuesday morning. As they have been doing for nearly two years, the group first gathered together in library for class.  This disparate group made up of a mix of working professionals, retirees, stay at home parents and grandparents.  Until two years ago, many couldn’t distinguish an Aleph from a Tav.  Some knew each other, most were strangers.  But now with a common bond, a shared journey, they make their way one step closer to reaching their “Mt. Sinai,” their promised land.

They were five of the members of our Adult B’nai Mitzvah class.  And this would turn out to be anything but just a regular Tuesday morning.  Leaving the friendly confines of the library where they had spent their time learning not only to read Hebrew, but to understand aspects of our liturgy, Torah and it’s commentaries, they filed into Maltz Center.  Some tentatively ascended the bimah…reality slowly sinking in.  This is where it would happen.  Huddled in a small circle on the bimah,  they stood in front of the open Ark.

Each took a turn holding the Torah scroll.  The very same scroll in fact, that hundreds and hundreds of previous Temple Emanuel B’nai Mitzvah (13 year olds, and adults alike) have held and chanted from—linking some of them to their children and grandchildren who’ve held the very same scroll—and linking all of them to the generations of B’nai Mitzvah who’ve come before them and who will follow them.

“I feel a huge sense of Awe.” said one, as the Torah was passed to the next classmate.
“I feel the weight of our tradition.”  And, onto the next classmate.
“ I just feel so proud.”

Learning a new language at any age is no easy feat.  Those of us who’ve attempted to learn any new language, especially as an adult, know that the older we get, the harder it gets.  And Hebrew is a one  challenging language.

Over the past two years both Rabbi Zimmerman and I, who’ve been teaching and guiding the process, were no strangers to hearing the phrases, “I can’t” or “I’m not getting up there and singing.” And, “This is impossible, there’s no way!”

Well, on this “regular” Tuesday morning the “I can’ts, and “I won’ts” and “no ways” slowly began to disappear….

We uncovered the Torah, and unrolled the scroll.  The students now realizing now just how real this was about to become….no vowels, no punctuation, no chapter headings, all handwritten----and no fear.

One by one, each student took the yad (pointer) and placed it down on the starting word.  Never was there a more beautiful sound of not just silver gliding upon parchment, but of voices loud and strong, clear and radiant---full of pride, and excitement.  Chanting the words and melodies that have been a part of us for thousands of years—ringing out for the ages.

These students left that morning knowing that their hard work had paid off, giddily anticipating their B’nai Mitzvah services in four to six weeks.  They can and WILL do it, and hopefully,  you might join them at the New Emanuel Minyan Service on Saturdays June 4, 11 and 18.

Cantor Yonah Kliger

"The Secret Is Out" by Rabbi Laura Geller

The secret is out. It was on the front page of yesterday's LA Times under the headline: "Rebranding a Denomination: Rabbis Try to Update Conservative Judaism as Membership Declines."  It seems that Conservative Jews don't really know what it means to be a Conservative Jew.

I saw the paper last night after my flight from Cincinnati where I had spent three days at the Reform Jewish Think Tank, a working group representing the three pillars of the Reform movement: the Central Conference of American Rabbis, the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, and the Union of Reform Judaism.  The Think Tank was convened because for us, like for Conservative and other liberal Jews, this is a moment of change. The Jewish world of our parents and grandparents is no longer the world we live in; Jewish identity is no longer framed primarily as a reaction to the Holocaust and a response to the State of Israel.  All Jews in the twenty-first century are Jews by choice, choosing to identify with Judaism because it brings meaning and purpose to our lives.  Our community is more diverse than ever before, and there is no longer one Jewish narrative.

What does it mean to be a Reform Jew?  What are the values of our "movement"?  What institutions are necessary to support this movement and how can they collaborate to create the environment in which Reform Judaism and Reform Jews can flourish?   How will Reform synagogues change in response to the challenges of changing economic realities, the focus on individual spirituality as opposed to communal obligation, and the shift in philanthropic priorities?  What does membership mean in a world of virtual as well as face-to-face community?  What kinds of leaders, rabbis, educators, and cantors should our Hebrew Union College be training?  How do we support that training?

This is a moment of change.  The Union of Reform Judaism just named my friend Rabbi Richard Jacobs as the next president of the URJ.  And as the Forward newspaper said in a recent editorial, "Whoever leads the URJ can really matter in American Jewish life.  With 900 synagogues serving 1.5 million people, the Reform movement is the nation's largest Jewish denomination."  It goes on to say: "Rabbi Jacobs is a wise and bold choice. Wise because he seems to exude that rare combination of intellectual smarts, rabbinic charisma, and social empathy necessary for Reform leadership, with a solid track record to back it up. Membership at his Westchester Reform temple in Scarsdale grew from 900 households to 1200 during his twenty years as a rabbi."  In an interview with the Forward, Rabbi Jacobs spoke of bringing "transformation change" to the Reform movement, and said that the synagogue needs to become more "compelling, meaningful, and engaging" to retain its members and attract the unaffiliated and the uninspired.  Social justice, revitalized prayer, synagogue transformation, and Israel have always been at the center of his rabbinate.  I know all this because we have each continued our learning together both at the Institute for Jewish Spirituality and at the Hartman Institute in Jerusalem.

The secret is out. Our Reform movement and our Jewish world is at a moment of change. It is time to really focus together on the values, ideas, and vision of a movement that will inspire and engage us, our children and our grandchildren to create "living Judaism" - a Judaism that is alive and changing, and that gives each of us the tools and opportunities to live our Judaism in a way to bring meaning, purpose, community, and a connection to the sacred into our lives.

Rabbi Laura Geller

"Today is the second day of the Omer" by Rabbi Laura Geller

Judaism's most powerful spiritual tradition sounds simple: 
 "Teach us to count our days that we may get a heart of wisdom." (Psalm 90) But how do we count our days? What is the spiritual practice that can teach us? 

It is called "counting the omer", and it began yesterday. Here's what the Torah says about it: "And from the day on which you bring the omer (a specific measurement) of the wave offering-the day after Passover-you shall count off seven weeks.  You must count until the day after the seventh week -fifty days.  Then you shall bring an offering of new grain to Adonai." 

We learn more about it, later, in the Book of Joshua, which describes the first Passover in the land of Israel, after the forty years of wandering in the wilderness, after the years when the food we ate was manna which fell from heaven. When we finally entered the land of Israel, the manna stopped, and we fed ourselves from the produce of the land. Imagine what it must have meant, after that first Passover, to finally eat bread made of wheat grown in our own land! The ritual of counting the days, of bringing a grain offering of freshly baked bread made out of an omer of wheat, was a way  for us to thank God for all those years of the omer's worth of manna we were given by God.

So what does it mean to count our days?

It means to notice what we have to be thankful for, all those things we take for granted: our homes, our families, our work, our ability to feed our families. And maybe it reminds us that others in our world aren't so lucky, and we need to do something about that.

By the time of the Rabbinic period, from the 1st century CE, we were no longer farmers. So the rabbis added a dimension to this tradition by linking the fiftieth day, the day after seven weeks, to Shavuot, the anniversary of the revelation at Mt Sinai. So for our rabbis, the counting wasn't about a harvest, but rather about a journey, a journey from slavery to freedom, from the narrow place represented by Egypt to the expansiveness symbolized by the giving of Torah.

So what does it mean to count our days? It means to notice our journey, and to ask ourselves where we are going and why, and for whom we are responsible along the way.

The mystical tradition offers a way to notice our journeys. Kaballah describes the ten sephirot, ten different dimensions of God. Only seven are accessible to us. As Rabbi Arthur Green explains in The Jewish Holidays: A Guide and Commentary by Michael Strassfeld:
 "The 49 days form a multiplication of seven times the seven Sefirot, which represent aspects of both the divine and human personalities: Hesed (love), Gevurah (power, judgment, including anger), Tiferet (glory, pride, also inner balance), Netzach (triumph, aggrandizement), Hod (beauty), Yesod, (the "foundation," including sexual energy), and Malchut (kingship, authority, but also the feminine component in the male personality). Each of the seven in turn contains all seven within itself, making a total of 49 inner aspects of the divine/human self. On each day of the counting... [we] seek to restore or elevate within ourselves the combination of the Sefirot belong to that day. This is readily comprehensible on a moralistic or psychological level... Thus, on the first day of the Omer, one works on the Hesed within Hesed, on the purest love the soul can find within itself. On the second day, (today-Thursday April 21) attention is focused on the Gevurah within Hesed, the anger or judgment within one's love; the third day on Tiferet in Hesed, the glory or perhaps a self-glorification that lies within love; and so forth. In the second week the focus is on Gevurah, beginning with Hesed in Gevurah, the love inside the judgment, and proceeding through the system. Thus the counting becomes a series of meditative and morally restorative exercises, purging the self and preparing to stand again at Sinai."

Today, Thursday, the second day, we focus on Gevurah sh'b hesed, the discipline or boundaries that are ought to be connected with love. Rabbi Jacobson asks about this day: Is my love disciplined enough? Do I respect the one I love or is it a selfish love? His suggestion for an exercise for this day is: "Help others on their own terms, not on yours."

The tradition is to count the omer at night (remember that in Jewish tradition the Hebrew day begins the night before) with the blessing:" Holy One of blessing, whose presence fills creation, you make us holy through connections, and connect us to each other and to You through counting the omer." Then you insert the appropriate day's count, so tonight would be:  "Today is three days of the omer."

Last year we sent you an email every day during the Omer period to remind you to count your days.   This year, instead of a daily email from us, we offer you a few links to some omer counting disciplines on line and invite you to choose to sign up.


http://www.mussarleadership.org/middot/avot_6_6.html
http://www.meaningfullife.org/lists/?p=subscribe&id=1 (select Daily Omer to receive a daily reminder.)

You can even sign up for an app on your Iphone!  http://neohasid.org/resources/omer/iphone/

Let us know if you find the practice helpful to you as you continue your journey from liberation to Sinai.

May you discover a heart of wisdom.

Rabbi Laura Geller

"Living In Alignment" by Rabbi Jill Zimmerman

If you haven't seen Oprah's Master Class episodes where she suggests that a person view his or her life as "a classroom" you must find a way to view them.  Here is a quote from the series:  "Everybody's life has a pattern... That's really how you get to determine what your purpose is... If you don't know your purpose, your immediate goal is to figure that out, 'cuz otherwise you are just wandering around here... How do you know what is your purpose?  (It's when you are doing something and) It feels like, 'this is what I should be doing... this is where I feel most myself... I feel at home here...'"

Our tradition believes that in addition to being made in the image of God, each person is created with a unique configuration that only she or he can be, or fulfill.  In the Talmud, the rabbis proclaim that God imprints us each individually at birth - no two of us are alike.  We can even see the tradition of Shabbat as a time that implores us to slow down enough, each week, to listen to the voice inside us that asks, "Am I living my unique purpose?" "Am I bringing all of who I am to the worlds I inhabit?" and "Am I moving in the direction I want to go, or am I wandering in the desert?"

Do you know the Hasidic story about Reb Zusya?  When he was about to die, his followers gathered around him and noticed that he was crying.  They asked, "Why are you crying? You have lived a good, pious life."  He told them that he just had a vision of the question he would be asked when he entered the world to come.  He said, "I won't be asked, Zusya, why weren't you more like Moses, or Abraham?  But I will be asked - why weren't you Zusya?  That's why I'm crying. Why was I not Zusya?"

In a few weeks, we will sit at our Passover seders and remember the story where Moses is confronted by a burning bush that spoke to him and said:  "Go free our people."  A hard-to-ignore sign, and a profound, God-given purpose, all rolled into one moment. He said yes.  And here we are.

Not all of us get such a clear message. Instead, many of us have to listen to the still small voice inside of us that urges us to pay attention to what makes our hearts sing.  The voice that is a "yes" when we live in alignment with who we uniquely are and do what are supposed to be doing. 

As we prepare our homes and our hearts for this season of liberation, Oprah's and Zusya's message can serve as a powerful reminder to ask ourselves: "Am I living my purpose?"  And in asking the question and listening closely for the answer, we find ourselves coming one step closer to our own promised land.

Rabbi Jill Zimmerman