CBI Digital Offerings

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Dear CBI Community,

I’m writing today with updates on CBI’s digital offerings this week and in weeks to come. In this time of quarantine and sheltering-in-place, community connections can be especially sustaining — even if we can “only” connect with each other via computer or phone.

In this email you’ll find information about rabbinic office hours and “drop-in” hour, classes, meditation, and how to access our Shabbat morning services on Saturday either via Zoom (videoconferencing)  or via phone (for audio only.) There are instructions and guidelines for using Zoom at the bottom of this message.

Rabbinic Office Hours

Mondays and Fridays will continue to be my synagogue “on days,” even though I am working from home. If you want to meet with me via phone, Zoom, Facetime, or Skype, Mondays and Fridays are the best days for that. Reach out to me to schedule a time to meet!

(And if you have a pastoral need at another time, or on another day, don’t hesitate to reach out and I will get back to you as quickly as I can.)

Rabbinic Drop-In Hour / Have a Cup of Tea With Me! (Every Monday)

I will also be offering rabbinic “drop-in hour” at 1pm on Mondays. No appointment needed; just join me on Mondays at 1pm and chat about whatever’s on your mind. Bring your own cup of tea!

Edited on April 5 to reflect new security measures: if you want to join the drop-in hour, please text or email me and I will send you the login info and password.

Classes: Pirkei Avot with R’ David Markus (Thursdays, 2pm – Four Weeks)

Pirkei Avot is Judaism’s ancient wisdom text for ethical living, written during a period of crisis and upheaval. We’ll hear its words echo in our own moment of challenge. No experience or books necessary: all materials will be offered online.

Open both to members of CBI and to members of Temple Beth El of City Island (with whom we shared a joint community mission to Cuba last fall).

Edited on April 5 to reflect new security measures: those who’ve been taking this class will receive a zoom invitation and password via email from Rabbi David. If you wish to join, let R’ Rachel know.

Classes: Psalm-Writing with R’ Rachel (Fridays, 2pm – Four Weeks)

What is a psalm? How can psalms (both classical and contemporary) enliven us today? How can we add our own voices to the tapestry of tradition, and how can writing psalms enliven our relationship with text, tradition, ourselves, and our Source? This series of four weekly workshops (on psalms of gratitude, psalms of awareness, psalms of anxiety / fear, and psalms of wholeness / Shabbat) will invite participants into engaging with psalms and writing our own. Each week we’ll read and discuss both traditional psalms and contemporary poems, and guided writing exercises will offer a framework for writing our own psalms in these four different emotional modes. 

Open both to members of CBI and to members of Temple Beth El of City Island.

Edited on April 5 to reflect new security measures: those who’ve been taking this class will receive a zoom link and password via email from Rabbi Rachel. If you wish to join, let R’ Rachel know.

Morning Meditation (Fridays, 9am)

Join us at 9am on Fridays in the CBI zoom room for morning meditation. We’ll begin by centering ourselves in our bodies and following our breath as it comes and goes. We’ll also do some guided meditation and visualization before closing with a niggun, a wordless melody.

Edited on April 5 to reflect new security measures: our regular meditators will receive a zoom invitation and password via email. If you wish to join, let R’ Rachel know.

Shabbat Morning Services (Saturdays, 9:30am)

Join us on Saturday morning at 9:30am in the CBI zoom room for Shabbat morning services.

Edited on April 5 to reflect new security measures: login info and password will be emailed to everyone each week in an email from the office, and will not be publicly shared.

Preparing for services online:

The CBI Board and I hope that these offerings will help you stay connected — with each other, with our community, with our traditions, and with our Source. If there are other things you’d like to see us offer online, please let me know!

For now, know that I am holding all of you in prayer — and hope to see you on Zoom sometime soon.

Blessings to all,

Rabbi Rachel

 If you’re totally new to Zoom… Here’s a brief online video to help orient you to Zoom.
  
Note the Zoom Room. Some of our offerings are in CBI’s new Zoom room; others are in TBE’s Zoom room. Each offering has its own link, so make sure you’re clicking on the one that goes with a given class or offering.

Arrive early.  Our offerings begin and end on time. Zoom rooms will open 10 minutes early to help acclimate.

Treat time and place as sacred.  Online gatherings can be as sacred as we make them. Come online as if you’re coming to shul. Please be in a quiet place without outside disruption (as best you can manage): it’ll make all the difference to you and others.

Turn on your cameras.  Online community connections can be real and nourishing, and they’re most real and nourishing if everyone turns on their cameras. The more we treat our gatherings like the “real” gatherings they are, the more they will feel that way to everyone. Thanks for being a good Zoom citizen!
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We are not alone

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Dear CBI Community,


What a week it has been. Unlike any other we have known. And we know that many more unprecedented weeks are ahead of us.


In this moment we may feel more isolated than ever before. And yet the virus and its spread are a reminder that all of humanity is connected in ways large and small. Even as we take profound steps to curtail our physical connections, our essential connections remain. We are still connected in heart and spirit.


We are only at the beginning of what will be a long journey through the valley of covid-19. We will all need to learn ways to feel, and to strengthen, those connections of heart and spirit.


There’s much we can’t know, including how long this pandemic will last and how it will ultimately impact our community. But here’s something I do know: we are in this together.


Every Shabbat we sing “Mi Chamocha” (to the tune of “The Water is Wide” — you can listen to Mi Chamocha / Water is Wide here). This is the song our ancestors sang after crossing the Sea. Imagine what they had just been through: first the Ten Plagues, then they fled their homes in Egypt, and then the Egyptian army pursued them to the edge of an ocean. Surely some must have despaired. But then someone stepped into the sea — midrash (our interpretive tradition) names him as Nachshon — and following Nachshon, everyone walked through together.


“Mi Chamocha” is a reminder that whatever difficulties we face — whatever armies are pursuing us, whatever seas stand in our way — as Robert Frost wrote, there’s “no way out but through.” Our work in this moment is to resist despair. Instead we are called to cultivate hope, and to keep putting one foot in front of the other. And like our spiritual forebears, none of us have to cross the sea alone. We have each other, and we have that Presence that our tradition names as God.


We don’t have to cross this sea alone. May we find comfort in our togetherness — our fundamental spiritual connectedness — even when our bodies are apart.


In the coming days I’ll share some different opportunities for the CBI community to connect via zoom video, including a schedule of rabbinic “drop-in” hours and new online classes. (If you don’t yet have zoom, I hope you will download the app for your computer, tablet, and/or phone.) I hope that these offerings will help us feel connected as a community — we need that now more than ever.


Meanwhile, I urge all of us to reach out to each other: via email, via phone, via Facetime, in whatever ways we can. “Social distancing” means we need to keep our physical distance, but we don’t need to keep emotional distance. Consider lighting Shabbat candles tonight with a friend or family member, even if it’s “just” over the phone or video. (Here are resources for celebrating Shabbat at home.) Or email a friend to set up a coffee date over phone or video — or even do so with someone who isn’t yet a friend but might become so…


Tradition says that on Shabbat an ‘extra soul’ descends and enlivens us. And this particular Hebrew word for soul, neshamah, is related to a word for breath, neshimah. May Shabbat’s extra soul give us extra spaciousness, extra en-soul-ment, extra breath in these time when panic may be shortening our breath and constraining our spirit. May the light of our Shabbat candles connect us with the light of creation, the light of revelation, and most especially the light of hope. And may we feel our connectedness with each other, deeply — so that even as we are solitary in our houses, we can know that we are not alone.


Holding all of you in my prayers and in my heart this week and always —


Rabbi Rachel

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Like a fiddler on the roof

Dear Congregation Beth Israel members and friends,

Not long ago I was preparing to take my son to see the national touring production of Fiddler on the Roof, in which my niece Noa Luz Barenblat plays Chava. My son asked me, “what does the title of the play mean?” I told him here’s how I understand it: Life is precarious, but we still need music. We still need art and beauty and melody. We still need our traditions and what connects us with each other and our generations and our Source. Even when we feel that life is as precarious as a fiddler balanced on a rooftop. Maybe especially then.

The fiddler on the roof in Anatevka represents the miracle of the human spirit: singing out sometimes in pain and sometimes in joy, making music and marking holy time, even when life feels precarious. I find a deep teaching about spiritual resilience there — especially now.

For many of us, the covid-19 pandemic is awakening a sense of precariousness. None of us knows what tomorrow will bring. Of course, that’s always true, pandemic or not… but most of us don’t live with constant awareness of the fragility of our lives and the lives of those whom we love. How can we best navigate this time?

I have two answers: take care of ourselves, and take care of each other. And I think we can learn something about how to do that from the Jews of Anatevka.

The Jews of Anatevka were materially poor, but they were rich in community and traditions. We too have community — even when circumstances obligate us to connect via phone or zoom instead of in person. We too have traditions — even when circumstances obligate us to celebrate those traditions in slightly different ways for a while. Music and prayer can still uplift us, even if we’re feeling anxious and uncertain — or maybe especially then.

My friend and colleague Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg writes that now is a great time to double down on our spiritual practices… and if we don’t think we have any, now is a good time to develop some! Whether that means prayer, meditation, yoga, making art, listening to music: we should lean into whatever sustains our hearts and souls in this time. Because we’re going to need every ounce of strength and compassion and rootedness we’ve got in order to take care of each other.

One of the ways we’re taking care of each other is by pulling back from physical contact. The temporary closing of colleges and theatres and houses of worship is a step that’s being taken in order to protect the whole of our interconnected community. The hope is that these closures will slow the spread of the virus so that our hospital can keep up with the pace of infection. What higher aspiration could a community seek than to care for each other in these ways?

And, there are other ways that we can take care of each other, even at a distance. Even when we have to close down services for a while, we can gather via zoom. And we can call and email and text and Facetime and Skype and zoom with each other. It’s not the same as being together in person as a community — and, it’s still real human connection that can uplift our hearts.

Please do check up on each other. Reach out in all the modalities that the modern world offers. Take care of each other… and take care of you, too.

May our connections with each other, and with our traditions, and with our Source, sustain us through the pandemic and beyond.

Shabbat shalom,

Rabbi Rachel

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Update: CBI in this time of pandemic

See also: Like a fiddler on the roof, March 13, 2020.

Dear CBI community,

I am writing with an update on what we are doing at CBI about the covid-19 pandemic.

Assuming that the U.S. is following the trajectory set in Italy, it seems likely that we are going to see many more cases of the coronavirus in the coming days and weeks. Containment of the virus appears to no longer be an option. Now epidemiologists say that our best bet is to aim to mitigate its spread, so that we can flatten the curve of transmission and hopefully ensure that we don’t overwhelm our local hospital with more sick people than there are ventilators.

Chris Kelly and I attended the Rabbis and Presidents meeting yesterday with others across the county and with folks from Jewish Federation of the Berkshires. Based on our conversations with other rabbis and presidents across the county, and the recommendations of the Massachusetts Department of Public Health to cancel or postpone large gatherings, we’ve reached the following decisions, in which the whole Board of Directors concurs:

  1. Our Hebrew school is closed until after the public schools’ April vacation. We hope to resume classes on April 20th. 
  2. We are going to move to holding services remotely after tomorrow morning’s Shabbat service. Tomorrow’s service will take place as usual in our sanctuary; we ask everyone to wash hands and to practice social distancing (sit six feet apart and do not touch). After that, instead of gathering in our sanctuary in person, we will be gathering for prayer and fellowship via video for a while. (More on that below.)
  3. With deepest regret, we are cancelling our second night community seder this year. It will not be possible to have a seder and practice social distancing. 

These are not decisions we have reached lightly, but we believe them to be the best way we can protect the most vulnerable among us — the elderly and the immunocompromised — and the best way we can contribute to efforts to slow the spread of the virus.

We know that these extraordinary steps may heighten anxiety. Please know that my virtual office door is open to you: I am here to speak via phone or to meet via zoom or Facetime if you want to talk about the pandemic or anything else that’s on your mind and heart.

Please check in with each other, too. Reach out to friends across the community, see how people are, offer the social connectivity of a phone call or a video chat date. If you are still able to go out to get groceries, see if someone elderly or immunocompromised needs you to pick things up for them. We need each other now more than ever.

The virus is a potent reminder that we are all connected — across the globe, across every difference and division. May our connections with each other sustain us, even during this time when prudence and altruism and care for the vulnerable ask us to be physically apart.

Stay tuned for further updates. Meanwhile, I’m sending all of us blessings for a Shabbat of much-needed shalom —

Rabbi Rachel

About Services In The Next Few Weeks

This week (March 14) services will be held as normal in the Ada and Paul Paresky Sanctuary. Please wash hands upon arrival and practice social distancing (sit six feet apart, do not touch each other, do not kiss prayerbooks or the Torah.)

Next week (March 21) is the bar mitzvah of Cameron Miller. Immediate family will gather in the sanctuary to hear him read from Torah; everyone else in the community will be invited to participate via Facebook Live, and we will stream Shabbat morning services on our Facebook page as we have done with High Holiday services in the past. 

The following week (March 28) we will move to holding services via zoom videoconferencing. One of the upsides of zoom is that we can all see each other (unlike Facebook Live, where participants can’t see each other — FB Live is more of a broadcast medium.) 

You can download zoom for your computer, your smartphone, and/or your tablet. Here is their Frequently Asked Questions page. We will send out information about how to connect to our zoom room as that date approaches. 

Other Resources

Prayer For Washing Hands During A Pandemic, by Trisha Arlin

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Whose heart so moves

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Tell the Israelite people to bring Me gifts; you shall accept gifts for Me from every person whose heart so moves him…. And let them make Me a sanctuary that I may dwell among them. (Ex. 25:2, 8)

I recently gathered a bunch of paperwork to bring to the person who helps me with my taxes. Maybe you’re doing something similar as spring approaches. Here’s the thing about taxes: they are not optional. They are not “gifts” that we give to the government out of the goodness of our hearts. And we don’t only have to give them if we happen to feel moved to do so.

We may or may not feel moved by the need for roads and hospitals and schools. I mean, I think we should feel moved by those things! But regardless of whether or not our hearts resonate with the need for working traffic lights and decent pavement and safe places to educate kids, we pay taxes to support those things, because that’s how our society works.

But when it came to the building of the mishkan, the dwelling place for God, it wasn’t a matter of taxation. It wasn’t a matter of “dues.” It was a free-will offering from everyone whose heart was so moved. And a few verses later, God says “Let them make Me a sanctuary that I may dwell among them.” Or, in my preferred translation, “that I may dwell within them.”

I see a connection between the freewill nature of the offerings, and the indwelling presence of God within and among us. If a place is built out of dry obligation, or God forbid with coercion, then it’s not a place where holiness can dwell. The way we make a place where God can dwell is by opening our hearts. Not by asking “what have you done for me lately,” but by giving.

Later at the end of the book of Exodus we’ll learn that so many people brought contributions that Moshe had to tell them to stop. But we’re not there yet. This week, we’re at the point in the story where God tells Moshe to tell the children of Israel to bring gifts. And they bring all different kinds of gifts. Materials for building, for weaving, for metalworking…

One of my favorite ways to read Torah is as an inner road map to becoming the people we’re called to be. I believe that these verses aren’t just about “them back then” but also about us now. Which raises the question: what are the gifts we can bring? What skills, what talents, what passions can we bring to the building of this community so that holiness will dwell within us?

Sometimes our presence is a gift — when we show up to pray, to learn, to experience holidays, to celebrate and mourn. Sometimes our skills are a gift — whether needlework or baking, carpentry or grant-writing. Sometimes our time is a gift.  And of course sometimes our money is a gift. “Ein kemach, ein Torah,” the Talmud teaches: without food, there is no Torah.

What matters isn’t how much we give, or in what form. What matters is that we feel moved to give in the first place. Because the more of ourselves we give, the more we receive in return. The more of ourselves we give, the more connected we feel with whatever we’re giving to. And lack of connectedness is one of the most profound sorrows afflicting the world today.

Robert Putnam wrote about it twenty years ago in his groundbreaking book Bowling Alone. He described how Americans have become increasingly disconnected from family, friends, neighbors, even from the structures that sustain our democracy. The best antidote to disconnection is to show up and connect. And giving connects us. Especially when we give of ourselves. 

Torah has different names for different kinds of offerings. The word that gives this week’s Torah portion its name is terumah, sometimes translated as a “lifted-apart” offering, or an “uplifting” offering. As Torah describes, those whose hearts lifted up in generosity brought what they could. Or maybe: those who brought what they could, found that their hearts were lifted up.

So that’s my prayer for us today. May our hearts move us to give. May our giving connect us. And may our souls be uplifted on giving’s spiritual updraft. 

This is the d’varling that Rabbi Rachel offered at CBI on Shabbat morning (cross-posted to Velveteen Rabbi.)

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A letter from the Board and the rabbi

Dear Congregation Beth Israel members and friends,

Shavua tov: a good new week to all. We hope that everyone’s Shabbat was sweet. We’re writing to say that we hear you — and that we want to hear from you even more. 

Reverberations from the annual meeting continue to ripple through our community. We thank everyone who has shared feedback, and our doors remain open if you wish to speak. When we speak with each other, we can seek to see each other through generous eyes. Seeing each other this way, even when we disagree, is essential to a healthy spiritual community. 

Some of the issues that have been raised are pastoral, spiritual, emotional, and/or personal. Please know that Rabbi Rachel actively takes your feedback to heart. (And on a personal note, she wants to thank you all for your kindness as she emerges from the eleven months of saying kaddish for her mother, and asks your continued patience as she gets back “up to speed.”)

Other issues that have been raised are the domain of the Board, and the Board is working on these. The Board began the current term by writing a grant application to upgrade CBI’s security, establishing the new CBI “Green Team,” and more. The Board is working now on scheduling the promised bylaws discussion gatherings. Stay tuned for dates, coming soon.

The upshot of this note is this: we truly value your feedback. Our doors are always open to anyone who wishes to speak. And we ask you to bear with us as we discern together how Board and clergy can best serve this community that we all hold dear, and how best to pursue community reconciliation and healing while also working to build CBI’s brightest future.

Some of you may have seen the CBI Board Covenant posted on interior windows in our social hall. We share it here in hopes that it can inform how we all relate. Our opinions are diverse, and our relationships to halakha and spiritual practice are diverse. We value these diversities. And, even with our many diversities, we cherish the common values that animate us all.

As we join together to build the future of CBI, may we be guided by the Jewish values articulated in our Board covenant, including the value of assuming each others’ best intentions and seeing each other through generous eyes.

Blessings to all,

Rabbi Rachel Barenblat

and

Chris Kelly, President; Joe Apkin, Vice President; Sue Hogan, Treasurer; Paulette Wein, Clerk; Lisa Howard, Susan Hogan, Caleb Wolfson, Tara Johnson, Natalie Matus, Maude Rich, Benjamin Rudin, Darlene Radin, Board

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