[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-ZFNaIsiSY]
This short video begins with a check-in for the CBI community, and then moves to a teaching from the rabbi of the Warsaw Ghetto for this week’s parsha that feels especially meaningful to me this year. There’s a transcript below the video if you’d rather read it than watch it. Thinking of you all. – Rabbi Rachel
Shavua tov, friends: a good week to you. I hope that your Shabbat was restorative. As we enter into week six of sheltering-in-place and social distancing, I wanted to check in. How are you holding up?
I miss you. All of you. It’s been a joy to see some of you via Zoom at my drop-in office hours on Mondays, at the Psalm-writing class I’ve been teaching on Fridays, at Friday morning meditation and at Shabbat services. I look forward to continuing to see you on Zoom, or hearing your voices by phone, or receiving your emails and texts, since right now those are the modalities available to us.
Here’s a funny thing that I’m starting to think maybe isn’t a coincidence. At the start of the new Jewish year, back in October, both of my hevruta partners / learning buddies — Rabbi Megan Doherty, who’s the Jewish chaplain at Oberlin, and my colleagues on the board of Bayit: Building Jewish — felt called to study a rabbi known as the Piazeczyner, also known as R’ Kalman Kalonymus Shapiro, also known as the Aish Kodesh, also known as the rabbi of the Warsaw Ghetto.
The Piazeczyner was writing from the Warsaw Ghetto. In a time of profound fear and anxiety, deprivation and illness. And yet he found ways to cultivate hope, even in those terrible times.
This week’s Torah portion is Tazria-Metzora, which offers teachings about how to handle a particular kind of sickness that was observable both in people, and in their dwellings. Both human beings, and their homes, could become “contagious” and needed to be quarantined for a time.
Whoa, that resonates in a whole new way this year.
The scholar Rashi, who lived around the year 1000, says this teaching is really about treasure hidden in the walls of the houses of the Emorites, whom our ancient ancestors conquered when we moved into the promised land. The houses would be marked as having tzara’at, and then they would be demolished, and we would find treasure in them.
The Piazeczyner asks: if the point is that there’s treasure in the walls, why wait seven days? Why not just knock them down? His answer is this: because the waiting helps us cultivate faith that good things will come.
Even in a difficult time, he writes — “when there is no school for our children, no synagogue in which to pray in community with a minyan, no mikvah (ritual bath)” — even in a time like that (a time like this!), we need to trust that God can help us turn even the most difficult of circumstances into blessings. We never know, when something difficult is happening, what blessing we might be able to find in it later when we look back on it.
So as we stay quarantined, sheltering in place, socially distancing to protect the vulnerable from the spread of this awful disease: may we follow the advice of the Piazeczyner, and try to cultivate trust that there may be treasure in these difficult days.
Maybe it’s the treasure of knowing that we are protecting each other from illness. Maybe it’s the treasure of coming to recognize what really matters to us — even if what really matters to us is something that right now we can’t have.
May we live to emerge from this narrow place, and may we connect in person again: speedily and soon, with God’s help.
Thinking of you and sending blessings to all.
Cross-posted to Velveteen Rabbi. With special thanks to R’ David Markus for learning this with me on Shabbes. For those who want the original teaching, it’s the Aish Kodesh on M’tzora 1940 / 5700.
A Video Message from Rabbi Rachel
Community, Divrei Torah, Pandemic, Spiritual Life[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-ZFNaIsiSY]
This short video begins with a check-in for the CBI community, and then moves to a teaching from the rabbi of the Warsaw Ghetto for this week’s parsha that feels especially meaningful to me this year. There’s a transcript below the video if you’d rather read it than watch it. Thinking of you all. – Rabbi Rachel
Shavua tov, friends: a good week to you. I hope that your Shabbat was restorative. As we enter into week six of sheltering-in-place and social distancing, I wanted to check in. How are you holding up?
I miss you. All of you. It’s been a joy to see some of you via Zoom at my drop-in office hours on Mondays, at the Psalm-writing class I’ve been teaching on Fridays, at Friday morning meditation and at Shabbat services. I look forward to continuing to see you on Zoom, or hearing your voices by phone, or receiving your emails and texts, since right now those are the modalities available to us.
Here’s a funny thing that I’m starting to think maybe isn’t a coincidence. At the start of the new Jewish year, back in October, both of my hevruta partners / learning buddies — Rabbi Megan Doherty, who’s the Jewish chaplain at Oberlin, and my colleagues on the board of Bayit: Building Jewish — felt called to study a rabbi known as the Piazeczyner, also known as R’ Kalman Kalonymus Shapiro, also known as the Aish Kodesh, also known as the rabbi of the Warsaw Ghetto.
The Piazeczyner was writing from the Warsaw Ghetto. In a time of profound fear and anxiety, deprivation and illness. And yet he found ways to cultivate hope, even in those terrible times.
This week’s Torah portion is Tazria-Metzora, which offers teachings about how to handle a particular kind of sickness that was observable both in people, and in their dwellings. Both human beings, and their homes, could become “contagious” and needed to be quarantined for a time.
Whoa, that resonates in a whole new way this year.
The scholar Rashi, who lived around the year 1000, says this teaching is really about treasure hidden in the walls of the houses of the Emorites, whom our ancient ancestors conquered when we moved into the promised land. The houses would be marked as having tzara’at, and then they would be demolished, and we would find treasure in them.
The Piazeczyner asks: if the point is that there’s treasure in the walls, why wait seven days? Why not just knock them down? His answer is this: because the waiting helps us cultivate faith that good things will come.
Even in a difficult time, he writes — “when there is no school for our children, no synagogue in which to pray in community with a minyan, no mikvah (ritual bath)” — even in a time like that (a time like this!), we need to trust that God can help us turn even the most difficult of circumstances into blessings. We never know, when something difficult is happening, what blessing we might be able to find in it later when we look back on it.
So as we stay quarantined, sheltering in place, socially distancing to protect the vulnerable from the spread of this awful disease: may we follow the advice of the Piazeczyner, and try to cultivate trust that there may be treasure in these difficult days.
Maybe it’s the treasure of knowing that we are protecting each other from illness. Maybe it’s the treasure of coming to recognize what really matters to us — even if what really matters to us is something that right now we can’t have.
May we live to emerge from this narrow place, and may we connect in person again: speedily and soon, with God’s help.
Thinking of you and sending blessings to all.
Cross-posted to Velveteen Rabbi. With special thanks to R’ David Markus for learning this with me on Shabbes. For those who want the original teaching, it’s the Aish Kodesh on M’tzora 1940 / 5700.
In the wilderness
Divrei Torah, Omer, PandemicA d’varling for the end of week five of covid-19 sheltering-in-place.
As we leave Pesach behind we set out into the wilderness, trusting that somehow we’re moving toward Sinai, toward revelation, toward connection. The spiritual practice of counting the Omer is tradition’s way of helping us link Pesach with Shavuot, liberation with revelation, the constriction we’re leaving behind with the expansiveness and covenant we’re heading toward.
This year it may be hard to focus on that count because we are doing another kind of counting: how many days we’ve been quarantined / sheltering-in-place / socially distancing / staying home. How many days and weeks it’s been since life felt “normal.” And how many weeks it might be before we can return to seeing each other again, being with each other again.
The first thing I want to do is give all of us blanket rabbinic permission to “mess up” the Omer count. It’s okay if we forget. It’s okay if we miss a day. It’s okay if we can’t focus on the kabbalistic meanings of the seven qualities we’re called to cultivate. A lot of our brainspace is dedicated right now to the news, the pandemic, what we’re going to eat, who’s sick and who’s well.
That’s normal. And it’s okay. And… that’s exactly the wilderness in which we’re wandering this year — as a people, as a nation, as a planet. Which means we’re right where our core ancestral story says we should be. In the wilderness. Not totally sure where we’re going or how we’re going to get there or what losses we’ll incur along the way. Maybe uncertain. Almost certainly afraid.
The Hebrew word bamidbar, “in the wilderness,” shares a root with the verb l’daber, “to speak.” The wilderness can be a place of fear, a place of not-knowing, a place that feels dangerous. And that’s exactly the place where we hear God’s voice. The place where holiness speaks to us. The revelation at Sinai takes place in a place that no one owns, in the wilderness, in not-knowing.
As I watch the pandemic play out at hospitals around the world, I’ve been thinking a lot about the time I spent as a student chaplain at Albany Medical Center almost 15 years ago. I remember that hospitals are profoundly holy places — not despite our fear and not-knowing, but precisely because of it. When our hearts are cracked open, they also open to connection.
It’s like Jacob said when he woke from the dream of the ladder with angels moving up and down: “God was in this place, and I — I did not know!” God is always in the place where we are, when we are there fully. A crisis like this one can focus us. It can make us really present, which may be uncomfortable. And it can open us to God’s presence, which may be uncomfortable, too.
The whole world is wandering in the wilderness of this pandemic. We don’t know how we’ll get to the other side, or how long it will take, or what losses we’ll incur along the way. We’re not alone in this. We may be alone in our homes, but we’re not existentially alone. We’re all in this together. The spread of the virus reminds us that we’re more connected than we ever knew.
Last Shabbat, in the Torah reading for the Shabbat during Pesach, we heard God say to Moses, “I will go in the lead and will lighten your burden.” That verse is bringing me comfort this week: the idea that God is here with us in the wilderness. God is walking with us. God is keeping us company. And our souls are keeping each other company, too, even when we are alone.
May we feel each others’ presence in this time of separation. May we feel God’s presence in this time of separation. May we hear the voice of holiness speaking to us in this wilderness. May we open ourselves to the voice of love, the voice of justice, the voice of hope. And may we build a world of greater justice and love — for everyone — when we make it to the other side.
This is the d’varling that Rabbi Rachel offered at Kabbalat Shabbat services via zoom this week (cross-posted to Velveteen Rabbi.)
This week’s digital offerings
Classes, Omer, Pandemic, ShabbatThis week’s digital offerings have just been emailed out to our mailing list: login info and password for today’s Rabbinic Drop-In Hour, tomorrow’s Omer discussion with Jen Burt, Wednesday’s Yizkor service, Thursday’s Pirkei Avot class with Rabbi David Markus, and Friday’s morning meditation, psalm-writing class, and Kabbalat Shabbat services with Rabbi Rachel.
The login and password info will NOT be posted on Facebook or this blog, so the only way to get it is by joining our email list. If you’re not on that list and want to be, please email the office at cbinadams at gmail dot com.
Stay safe, everyone.
Looking Ahead to Pesach
PesachDear CBI Community,
Pesach is coming soon. In this email you’ll find resources for holding a first-night seder at home, information about a second-night Zoom seder, and a ritual for ending Pesach, too.
Second Things First: Our Second Night Seder
Although we’re not holding a second night community seder in person at CBI this year, we are planning to offer a Zoom-based Second Night Seder.
Please RSVP to me (rabbibarenblat at gmail dot com) and let me know if you will join us at via Zoom at 6pm on Thursday April 9. I’m working now on figuring out exactly how that seder will work, and to some extent the answer will depend on how many of us are coming and how many of us are kids. Thank you!
Getting Ready
It may be hard to imagine a seder during sheltering-in-place or quarantine. But the Passover seder is a home-based ritual that can be meaningful even when one is homebound. Even the possibility of a solitary seder isn’t new: Talmud teaches that if one is alone at Pesach, one should ask the Four Questions of oneself. Whatever we do this year won’t be “the same” as the kind of seder most of us are used to, but nothing about this year is the same as usual. Maybe the very strangeness of this year’s seder can help us experience the spiritual dynamics of the Pesach journey in a new way. Here are some tools for building this year’s seder:
Building Blocks of the Seder
The core mitzvot of seder are:
You don’t need a fancy seder plate if you don’t have one on hand; a regular plate is just fine. Here’s a list from the URJ of What Items Go On the Seder Plate. Some also add an orange (representing the inclusion of all genders and sexualities), an olive (representing hopes for peace), a tomato (representing migrant/farm worker safety), and/or other meaningful items.
Blueprints For Your Seder
If you don’t have haggadot at home, here are some free downloadable haggadah options. It’s a good idea to download a haggadah in advance and spend some time with it so you can move through it comfortably when seder time arrives.
Of course, the haggadah is only a roadmap. Your internal spiritual journey will be shaped by you.
A Ritual to Close the Week, Too
Here’s a resource for celebrating a different kind of seder on the seventh day of the holiday (rather than the first or second): Seder for the Seventh Night by Rabbi Evan J. Krame
If you experiment with a seventh night seder, I hope it will help you feel that you’ve “come through the sea” and are able to sing out in praise on the other side.
Not Like Other Nights
This year is not like any other year. Whatever seder is for each of us this year, it will probably not be what we’re accustomed to. We trust that the ritual will still hold meaning, even though (r maybe especially because) we’re experiencing it in an unprecedented way. What does it mean to recount the tenth plague in a time of quarantine? What does it mean to seek to experience spiritual liberation at a time when many of us may feel “bound” by anxiety or illness or circumstance? What does it mean to celebrate Pesach meaningfully if we are home alone? I look forward to hearing your answers to these questions as the holiday unfolds this year.
Blessings to all,
Rabbi Rachel
These resources for Pesach during a time of quarantine also appear at Builders Blog, a project of Bayit: Building Jewish.
CBI Digital Offerings
Classes, Community, EducationDear 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
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!
We are not alone
Community, PandemicDear 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
Like a fiddler on the roof
CommunityDear 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
Update: CBI in this time of pandemic
CommunitySee 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:
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
Engraved on our hearts
Divrei TorahIn this week’s Torah portion we read about the instructions for making special garments for Aaron, brother of Moses: the first High Priest. We read about blue, purple, and crimson thread; about exquisitely decorated vestments; and about Aaron being declared “Holy to God.” What leapt out at me this year are the two precious stones engraved with the names of all the tribes of Israel. (Ex. 28:9-12) Aaron carried the names of the whole community on his shoulders, or at least, the names of the twelve tribes that together represented the whole community. Because to serve the community means to serve the whole community.
Today we welcome a beautiful little girl into our community. And I can’t wait to find out who she’ll grow up to be. Maybe she’ll want to put on costumes and star in our Purim play. Maybe she’ll sing the Four Questions at the community seder. Maybe she’ll make friends in our Hebrew school. And yet she isn’t just joining this little rural shul, this smalltown community. Because we’re part of something much bigger. We’re connected with Jews around the world, on every continent. And we’re connected with our spiritual ancestors stretching back thousands of years, and hopefully stretching forward at least as long.
To serve the community means to serve the whole community — and to join the community means to join the whole community. I point this out over and over to those who join the Jewish people as adults: they’re not just joining this shul, they’re joining the entire Jewish people! They’re joining Jews of every denomination, Jews of every race and skin color, Jews of every sexual orientation and gender expression. Rationalists and mystics, theists and atheists. Jews who express their Jewishness in so many different ways: through prayer, or poetry, or study, or feeding the hungry, or working for justice, or so much more.
There hasn’t been a High Priest in thousands of years. But as I sat with this Torah portion this week, here’s what came to me: what if all of us together could make the choice to engrave the names of the whole community — not on our shoulders, but on our hearts? Those names now include the name of the newest member of our community, to whom we are now responsible. It takes a village to raise a kid, and our shul is now part of her village. May we engrave her name, and each others’ names, on our hearts. And in that way, may all of us together be “holy to God,” as Aaron was, so very long ago. Shabbat shalom.
This is the d’varling that Rabbi Rachel offered at Shabbat morning services (cross-posted to Velveteen Rabbi.)
Shavua tov! Looking forward to Shabbat Tetzaveh and to Purim
ShabbatShavua tov — a good new week to you!
Join us for Shabbat services at 9:30am on Saturday morning led by Rabbi Rachel. This week we’re reading from parashat Tetzaveh. If you’d like to read some commentaries on this week’s parsha, here are a few:
Here’s commentary from Steve Silbert and Rabbi Mike Moskowitz at Builders Blog, a project of Bayit: Building Jewish:
And here are commentaries from the URJ:
Hope to see you soon at CBI. Save the date and join us at 6pm on Monday March 9 for Purim!