Torah Study

Mishkan Shalom "One Book Miskhan" Panel Discussion this Sunday

Lisa Tuttle — Fri, 02 May 2008 12:03:30 -0400

When: Sunday, May 4th, 10 - 11:30 am
Where: Mishkan Shalom Synagogue, 4101 Freeland Avenue, Philadelphia

Tamar KamionkowskiLisa Kelvin TuttleThe Mishkan Shalom library committee's Third Annual "One Book Mishkan" series — drawn from the themes related to Richard Friedman's Who Wrote the Bible — will host its ever popular panel discussion this weekend. This year's panel is convened by biblical scholar S. Tamar Kamionkowski, Ph.D., and Lisa Kelvin Tuttle.

Dr. Kamionkowski is Vice President for Academic Affairs and Academic Dean, Chair of the Department of Biblical Civilization and Associate Professor of Bible at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College. Ms. Tuttle is Communications Director for the Jewish Reconstructionist Federation and editor of Reconstructionism Today. An active member of Mishkan Shalom, she is a coordinator of the congregation's Shabbat morning Torah study.

The panelists will each discuss the influence of the historical-critical approach to reading the Bible on their own faith, and then the floor will open to questions. The panel will be moderated by longtime library committee member Dr. Adam Blistein, Executive Director of the American Philological Association.

This event is free and open to the public and will be followed by a reception.

For more information e-mail library@mishkan.org or call Lillian Sigal, Chair at 610-642-2376.

Omer Learning Initiative 2008/5768

Rabbi Shawn Zevit — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 21:30:56 -0400

From Seedtime to Harvest:
From the values and spirit of tikkun to community building and sustained action

Beginning on the eve of the second day of Pesach, we are instructed by our tradition to count the days of the “Omer” until the fiftieth day, which is when the first barley crop would be harvested. It is also the Jewish holiday of Shavuot when, according to our tradition, the Jewish People received the Torah at Mt. Sinai. The counting of the Omer is a bridge between Pesach and Shavuot – between a moment of liberation and a moment of self-definition and direction at the beginning of our evolution as a religious civilization. It is an opportunity to deepen our study and close the gap between ideas and action for the tikkun (rebalancing, repair) of the challenges we face in our world.

More than 800 participants and commentators from 90 JRF congregations are participating in the JRF On-Line Omer Study Initiative this year! Congregations with the most participants include:

West End Synagogue, NY
Mishkan Shalom, Philadelphia, PA
Darchei Noam, Toronto, CAN
Dorshei Derekh, Philadelphia, PA
Adat Shalom, Bethesda, MD
Oseh Shalom, Laurel, MD
Jewish Community of Amherst, MA
Columbia Jewish Congregation, MD
Temple Hillel Bnai Torah, West Roxbury, MA
Beth Israel, Media, PA
Kol Halev, Cleveland, OH
Dor Hadash, Pittsburgh, PA
Havurah Shalom, Portland, OR

Each week during JRF's fourth annual Interactive Omer Study Project, we will highlight resources, teachings, and wisdom gleaned from the Reconstructionist movement and our organizational partners, on the following topics, that cover the major areas JRF and our member congregations have been working intensly on these past few years. The goal is to pull together the wide array of resources and encourgae the sharing of best practices and additional resources across our movement:

Week One - Congregation-Based Community Organizing (CBCO)

This year, the teachings will arrive in one electronic packet at the beginning of each week and ongoing learning will take place through the accompanying study listserve.

To receive an email alert when new postings have been added to the JRF website, please sign up using the form on the right-hand side of the webpage.

For additional information please contact Rabbi Shawn Zevit at JRF, 215-885-5601 x 24.

2007 Omer teachings on environmental sustainability

2006 Omer teachings on hunger and povery

2005 Omer teachings on Pirke Avot

Pirkei Avot Teachings from Omer Study 2005

Rabbi Shai Gluskin — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 15:36:15 -0400

According to Jewish tradition, Jews are instructed to count the days of the "omer" -- the barley sheaf -- until the fiftieth day, which is when the first barley crop would be harvested. The fiftieth day is the Jewish holiday of Shavuot when, the rabbis tell us, Jews received Torah at Mt. Sinai. During the Omer period, reading Pirke Avot (Ethics of our Ancestors) -- the most popular and accessible part of the Talmud -- is also a traditional part of these seven weeks. Pirke Avot is a source of ethical teachings codified around the year 200 C.E.

In 2005, Shavuot also corresponded with the 50th birthday of the Jewish Reconstructionist Federation. To celebrate our 50th birthday, JRF invited everyone to share in the study of Pirke Avot together. Reconstructionist Rabbis and educators presented three Mishnayot (sections) from one perek (chapter) of Pirke Avot on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday of each week.

The teachings were:
Chapter Date Teachers
1 May 2, 2005 Rabbis Fredi Cooper, Jeffrey Eisenstat, Shai Gluskin
2 May 9, 2005 Deborah Eisenbach-Budner
3 May 16, 2005 Rabbis Shawn Zevit and Fredi Cooper
4 May 23, 2005 Rabbi Richard Hirsh
5 May 30, 2005 Rabbi Steve Segar
6 June 6, 2005 Rabbi Nancy Fuchs-Kreimer

Read these teachings on the TorahQuest web site.

Ann Arbor Reconstructionist “Hav” Sponsors Shabbaton with Rabbi Alan Lew

Abby Weinberg — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 14:56:18 -0500

Start: Apr 4 2008 - 6:00pm

End: Apr 6 2008 - 2:30pm

Rabbi Alan Lew, a leader in the budding Jewish meditation movement, will be visiting Ann Arbor from April 4-6, 2008. All are invited to partake in this weekend of pre-Passover spiritual preparation. The weekend will include several talks, text study, and experiential components to take place at several Jewish venues around Ann Arbor, MI.Alan Lew 2/08

Erev Shabbat will begin with a Shabbat Dinner at 6 pm, followed by Shabbat Services including a sermon by Rabbi Lew. On Shabbat morning services will be based on a traditional model but will include considerably less text, and considerably more chanting and silence. Saturday afternoon themes of discussion will be “The Four Cups of Freedom; Four Aspects of Spiritual Liberation,” and “Leave-Taking; The Biblical Pre-Requisite to Spiritual Liberation.” The afternoon program will conclude at Beth Israel Congregation with a seudah sh’lisheet (third meal).

Sunday morning will be devoted to a meditation workshop based on his most recent book, Be Still And Get Going. "It will be an examination of Yetziat Mitzraim (the Exodus from Egypt)," says Lew, "the seminal moment of Biblical leave-taking, and the extraordinary Five-Step program for transformation that we find there."

Rabbi Alan Lew served many years as the spiritual leader of Congregation Beth Sholom in San Francisco, where he is currently the emeritus rabbi. He is also the founding director of Makor Or, a center for Jewish meditation adjacent to Beth Sholom. He has published several books, travels and lectures extensively, and has won numerous awards.

The cost for the whole weekend is $36. For more information, please contact Devon Fitzig at 665-4744 or dfitzig@templebethemeth.org, or see the attached flyer.

Creating a World Without Bullies

R Shoshana Kaminsky — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 16:40:36 -0400

Jacob Gives Gifts to EsauThe following is an excerpt from a sermon I gave on Rosh Hashanah called, Bible Bullies. You can read the sermon in its entirety on my blog:

The pediatrician who supervised the assessment that our son had Asberger's Syndrome broke the news to me gently as though he was waiting for me to burst into tears.

But the son I brought home that day was the exact same child I've loved his entire life. In receiving the diagnosis, Bobby (my husband) and I strode right past denial, anger, bargaining, and depression and went straight to acceptance of Yonatan's condition. What we really wanted to figure out was how he was going to make his way in the world.

The answer to that question appears to be, “With difficulty.” Yonatan is spectacularly imaginative, awkward in his speech and movements, and very obviously intelligent. In short, he is the kind of kid who's just asking to be picked on. One of the early books I read on Asperger's Syndrome offered two hundred cheerful tips on raising children with the condition. But in the midst of the author's optimism and good humour, she reflected darkly on the school experience. School, she commented, was something that children with Asperger's Syndrome could only suffer through, not enjoy.

The closest thing she could offer to a ray of hope was the observation that kids were only in school for a relatively short period of their lives, and then they could get on with the work of enjoying themselves. I was not impressed. I want Yonatan's school years to be something more than a misery that will eventually pass, and I'm sure all parents want the same for their own children.

Read the whole sermon.

Omer Teaching: Talmudic Concept in Support of Buying Locally

Rabbi Seth Goldstein — Fri, 04 May 2007 10:41:39 -0400

One who sells his or her land to another is obligated to give his neighbor who has an adjoining field precedence in any sale… This is in accordance with the principle stated in Torah, “you shall do that which is right and good.” [Deuteronomy 6:18] Our Sages said that... it is right and good that the adjoining landowner should have a prior right of purchase over the one whose fields are far away. —Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Laws of Neighbors 12:5

Better a neighbor who is near than a brother who is far away. —Proverbs 27:10

Topics of Jewish practice as found within the Torah, Talmud and later writings extend far beyond the ethical and the ritual. In providing a basis for a community, the Torah also addresses areas of criminal and civil law. These regulations are greatly extended by the rabbis in the Talmud, and several tractates are concerned with laws we would most often associate with municipal, state and federal codes.

As contemporary Jews who live in dual civilizations, these matters of criminal and civil law are handled by civil authorities and the governments under which we live. We don't naturally look to our sacred texts as an authority on these matters. Even Jewish law itself demurs to civil authorities embodied in the principle of, dina demalchuta dina (the law of the land is the law), recognizes this.

Though rabbinic texts may not have authority in these areas, by investigating the spirit of these laws we can learn important lessons. We can uncover the underlying principles of these statutes, then seek to apply them in areas in which we do have authority and take action.

One such field of jurisprudence covered by Jewish law that is currently administered by civil code is property law. We cede to banks and civil courts—rather than batei din (Jewish courts)—in the buying and selling of land and real estate. However, some of the principles addressed with the corpus of Jewish Law can be important in our understanding of approaches to sustainability.

One such principle is that of bar metzra—the “law of the right of first refusal.” In short, if you are selling property, your adjoining neighbor has the right of first refusal in buying the land. You must offer to sell it to him first, and if he does not wish to purchase it, then it can go on the open market. This principle, codified in Maimonides code above, is found in the Talmud, Tractate Baba Metzia 108a-b.

The principle underlying this is that for an agricultural community, it is easier for a person to farm adjoining fields than disjointed fields. For many of us who are not farmers by vocation, this reasoning is irrelevant. Yet, even without farms we can see how this is a solid principle—one may want to buy an adjoining lot to have the option to extend one’s own property and yard, perhaps, or buy an adjoining condo to break through a wall and expand.

But to go even deeper, this principle of bar metzra teaches that continuity is better than disjointedness, proximity is better than remoteness, local is better than distance. In the context of sustainability, we can apply this principle to our own buying and selling by doing so in a way that focuses locally, on the community that immediately surrounds us. In making purchasing decisions, to try to buy and sell to those around us first, rather than those far off. The text from Proverbs provides biblical support and makes a compelling statement towards focusing locally on purchasing.

Buying local has many applications, and adds a deeper dimension to other principles of sustainability:

Buying organic produce is good, but if it is shipped halfway across the world, how organic is it?

Is it better to purchase certified organics from a large chain store based in a far off city, or buy non-certified organics, or even non-organics from locally owned businesses?

Buying locally allows us to become less alienated from the means of production, and to develop relationships with those who produce our food.

To promote buying locally, Temple Beth Hatfiloh is promoting the purchasing of specifically locally grown organic produce through sponsorship of a CSA. CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture, in which participants support local farmers by buying “shares” of the farm’s yield. For a one-time fee ($300-$500, depending on the size of the share), participants received a weekly delivery of in-season, freshly grown and harvested flowers and vegetables. As a group, members of the synagogue will have their shares delivered to the Temple. Educational programs at the farm, developed by our Youth Education Director, Ariel Zaslav (who developed the project), are being planned for participants. The Temple is also purchasing a share to donate to the local food bank.

Beth Hatfiloh Members Work at Garden Raised Bounty (GRuB) FarmOur own CSA supports even more aspects of tzedakah (righteous acts) because of the farm with which we are partnering. Garden Raised Bounty (GRuB) is a local organic farm that also promotes community gardening, builds gardens for low-income families, and provides jobs and leadership development for community youth. TBH has raised funds for GRuB in the past, and our religious school youth volunteered there as part of our annual Mitzvah Day.

The principle of bar metzra is drawn from the quote from Deuteronomy above—giving your neighbors priority when you sell your land is “right and good,” that is, a good thing to do even if not legally required. Buying local is a “right and good,” thing to do as it adds to the deepening and sustainability of our home communities.

Questions for Though and Discussion:

If you do not have access to an existing CSA or local farm with which to develop a relationship, how else can one “buy local”?

What are some practical means? What are some obstacles? What are other positives or negatives to buying locally?

How else can the principle of bar metzra be applied to community building and sustainability?

How can the quote from Deuteronomy be applied to our development of an environmental consciousness?

Omer Teaching: Jacob - Out of the "Flow"

Donna Kirshbaum — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 10:16:44 -0400

Emek Ayalon from Tel Gezer, Israel: by Shai Gluskin, December, 2006[Jacob] came close and kissed [his father Isaac]. [Isaac] smelled the fragrance of his [son Esau’s] clothes and he blessed [Jacob who was wearing them]. [Isaac] said, “See, my son’s fragrance is like the fragrance of a field blessed by YHVH.” (Genesis 27:27)

It’s easy to remember the moment in Genesis when Rebekah covers her favorite son Jacob in goatskins so that he’ll feel, to his blind father’s touch, just like his hairier twin Esau. The image of an ambitious mother secretly wrapping and binding her younger son’s hands and smooth neck (in rough approximation of Esau’s rough hands and neck) tends to linger, doesn’t it?

It’s just as easy to forget a more mundane detail in this scene, yet within it an important clue to Jacob’s vulnerable position may be embedded. It is this: before covering Jacob’s hands and neck with goatskins, Rebekah dresses him in his brother Esau’s clothes—his brother’s hamud clothes, the text specifies. (Genesis 27:15). Now hamud refers to things that are desirable, choice, even coveted for their attractive qualities. What on earth could make this rough outdoorsman’s clothes so attractive and important to Rebekah at this moment? Won’t her goatskin ruse be sufficient? We learn the answer twelve verses later. It is Isaac himself who tells us:

[Jacob] came close and kissed [his father Isaac]. [Isaac] smelled the fragrance of his [son Esau’s] clothes and he blessed [Jacob who was wearing them]. [Isaac] said, “See, my son’s fragrance is like the fragrance of a field blessed by YHVH.” (Genesis 27:27)

Jacob, in his brother’s clothes, now smells—not like any old field&mdsash;but a blessed field. Which can leave us wondering what Jacob might have smelled like to his father had he come to him with his hands and neck wrapped in goatskins, but still wearing his own clothes. The medieval commentator Rashi tells us that freshly washed goatskins smell awful, “could there be a worse odor?” he asks. “[The fact that Torah describes these borrowed clothes as hamud] teaches [us] that they smelled like the Garden of Eden.”

We can opt, however, for a more literal reading: Esau’s clothes smell like something that God holds so dear as to bless it—a field, in this case. By extension, Jacob’s own clothes may carry a stale smell, the fusty smell of goat grease and cooking smoke mixed with the fetid smell of the inside of sleeping tents, a smell his father would have recognized instantly as Jacob’s very own. [See prior teaching about Jacob being yoshev ohalim, someone who dwells—perhaps in our terms, “hangs out”—in and around tents.] And this very literal reading of the word hamud used to describe Esau’s clothes can, in turn, lead us to an unconventional understanding of Jacob as a young man; a reading that nonetheless may have some resonance for our own time.

In Genesis 25:27, Esau is described as a “man of the field“ while Jacob is described as a man of—well, as a mild man, a pure man, a simple man, a wholesome man, a quiet man, the kind of person who liked to stay at home. These are all real English translations of the phrase ish tam [a tam man], taken from every mainstream Biblical source available. [Several translations admit how problematic the word tam is in this context and note that “the meaning of the Hebrew is unclear.”] Of course the word tam is also used to describe the Simple Son of the Passover Haggadah. But somehow calling Jacob a “simple” or “naive” man on the order of the rabbinic archetype doen’t work. The unsophisticated of the Four Sons hardly does justice to his Hebrew name Yaakov, which puns easily on the word akov—crooked, deceitful.

We needn’t leave the Book of Genesis in order to find three other instances of the use of the word tam and some of its related forms. Let’s have a brief look at these additional examples.

In Genesis 47:15, after Joseph settles his famished brothers and father (the much older Jacob!) in Egypt, we learn that “the money ran out—va’i-tom et hakesef,” in Egypt and in Canaan.

Three verses later, “the year came to an end, ran out—vati-tom hashana

In that same verse, “the money [for provisions] ran out—ki im-tam hakesef.

While these translations have in common the idea of something being completed, spent, consumed, used up and certainly attach themselves well to what can happen to money and to a year, how could tam’s other meanings attributed to the young Jacob—mild, plain, simple, quiet, wholesome—bear any relation to either one? The money was “simple”? The year was “plain” or “innocent”?

But the young Jacob and the money and the year may yet have something in common: none of them flows. Certainly the money has stopped flowing, and this worries Joseph, now in charge of Egypt’s food supply. The year is no longer flowing; another year has now begun. And the young Jacob of Genesis 25:27, who presumably never goes out to fields blessed by YHVH, may have also stopped participating in the flow of nature, or may not even have begun to feel any connection yet with the world around him&mdsash;the flow of days, seasons, life itself—unlike his brother Esau, a man of the field, whose clothes hold “the fragrance of a field blessed by YHVH.”

Jacob casts off his staleness, as we know, even before he reaches his Uncle Laban’s homestead across the mountains in Haran. On his first night away from home, he falls asleep right on the ground and his connections to the natural world begin—with a vengeance. May we, who spend more of our days and nights in buildings than in fields, also have opportunities to cast off all that is stale and disconnected in us. We can’t save the planet until we feel, deep down, ineffably connected to it.

Questions for thought and discussion:

Do you have hamud (special, choice) clothes that smell of the field, like Esau’s? How does it make you feel when you wear them?

How can we rejuvenate our connection to the earth when we feel that our connection with it no longer flows the way it once did?

What activities do/can we have to deepen our connection to the earth in our Jewish communities? What personal and communal advantages are there to participating in such activities?

Omer Teaching: Heal the Heart, Lie on the Earth

Donna Kirshbaum — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 17:26:33 -0400

God was in this place and I—I didn’t know it. How awesome is this place! This is none other than God’s dwelling place… (Genesis 28:16-17)

Two centuries ago William Wordsworth wrote:

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!

Two years ago Ellen Bernstein, founder of Shomrei Adamah wrote:

Since the environmental crisis is a spiritual crisis, a sign of separation from nature and our selves, we must mend the division and fix the brokenness at the root.(p. 13, The Splendor of Creation, Pilgrim Press, 2005)

But how do we, as Wordsworth might put it, get our hearts back? What might lead us back from the brink of devastating separation from the rest of the world?

For one down-to-earth answer we can go to the middle of Genesis, straight to Jacob’s family homestead in Be’er Sheva, with the caveat that such an earth-centered point of reference may loosen the soil around some conventional readings of the text and expose different roots of the story.

We meet Jacob at the moment of his birth, following right on the heels of his twin Esau. It doesn’t take long before we find him using his guile to secure Esau’s birthright for himself in exchange for a lentil stew served up to his famished twin. (If our ears incline toward puns, we can hear the adjective akov—crooked, deceitful—embedded in his Hebrew name Ya’akov, and yashar—straight, upright—in his future name Yisrael.) Esau’s been outdoors hunting game; Jacob’s been hanging out at home cooking something tame.

In fact, this passage begins with a description of Esau as an outdoorsman (literally, an ish sadeh—a man of the field) while Jacob is described as an ish tam, (more about this in our next installment) who liked to sit around the tents (yoshev ohalim, as Gen. 25:27 puts it). At this point in the story Jacob is someone we’d probably call a homebody.

After this incident, however, the story shifts abruptly to a famine, the kind of experience that starts in the gut and ends up in the soul. Small wonder that, years later, when their father Isaac is old and blind, he sends his reliable provider, Esau, out to the fields for the kind of nourishing food that may give him enough strength to give this most beloved son a final blessing. But Isaac’s wife Rebekah, as we know, is bent on taking her sons’ destinies into her own hands.

And without ever leaving the farm, Jacob becomes an accomplice in his mother’s plan to secure her red-cheeked Esau’s blessing for her pale second-born. Jacob obediently fetches two young goats, but it’s his mother who presumably slaughters them, and it is she, we are told, who cooks the meat, seasons it to taste like game, and turns the skins into a rough disguise for her smooth-skinned boy.

The trick works well enough: Isaac, fooled or not, ends up giving the impostor the kind of end-of-a-lifetime blessing that perhaps only someone whose life has been deeply marked by hunger can give. This coveted blessing begins:

May God give you from the dew of the heavens and from the fat of the earth, [as well as] an abundance of grain and new wine. (Genesis 27:28)

No wonder Rebekah schemes to make sure that this son, this less than self-sufficient mama’s boy, receives his father’s blessing so that he’ll always have a constant supply of food when his parents are gone.

The story picks up even more speed when Esau returns with red meat and discovers he has been tricked, once again, out of what is rightfully his. So for protection from Esau’s blazing anger, Jacob is soon hustled by his mother out of Be’er Sheva toward his uncle’s home in Haran across the mountains.

Picture Jacob now: he’s probably never been much beyond the pens and pastures of home, never roamed in the open, never hunted or fished for his dinner, never befriended or evaded an animal in the wild. It’s hardly a surprise to learn from the text that the sun has already set before he’s figured out where and how to sleep that night.

But somehow he manages to do this, with his over-heated head on a cold stone and his aching body stretched out on the chilly ground. And then what a dream he has! A dream about a ladder anchored to the ground and angels (earthly angels?) who first go up and then come down. A dream with a promise embedded in it, too, a very earth-bound promise of fecundity and blessing, protection and homecoming to that land.

Georgia O'Keefe: Ladder to the Moon: How not to get there. Follow Jacob’s route instead—lie on the ground.Yes, Jacob’s mind sees spirit messengers and hears a message from the other world that night, but only after his body first touches the earth with no mediating carpets or furs, furniture or bedclothes in between him and the ground. Indeed, it is only after his own inner ladder—the backbone that connects a person’s most basic physical needs and desires to the workings of the mind and which first must pass by the heart—only when his very own spine rests on the earth can he dream of a ladder, a sort of spiritual spine, that connects a particular place on earth with its counterpart above.

And we know that when he wakes up, he has this to say:

God was in this place and I—I didn’t know it. How awesome is this place! This is none other than God’s [very] dwelling place…. (Genesis 28:16-17)

So here, flat on his back and utterly alone in the Judean hills, something life-changing begins to happen to this only-recently-sprung stay-at-home. We know from the rest of Jacob’s story that he never loses his keen intellect. Some time later, for instance, he’ll benefit enormously from his knowledge of animal breeding, creating for himself a fine sturdy flock in the midst of his uncle’s mediocre one.

But little by little something softens that very intellect that had heretofore been used, as far as we know, only to outwit his brother and father. Something tempers his craftiness and unbends his crookedness until finally he is ready to come home—a self-made man of immense agricultural wealth, that is to say, earth-wealth—and reconcile with his brother, first claiming a new name and identity during his famous wresting match with the Unnamed One.

We can think about the story from this environmental perspective as we look for solutions to the great spiritual crisis of our time. When was the last time most of us lay down on a rocky patch of earth or rolled in her grasses feeling held by her enormity? Or, if our physical limitations don’t allow these things, when was the last time someone picked up her sweet pungent soil for us and held it to our noses?

Maybe our separation from nature and our selves, as Bernstein puts it, will only end when enough of us get the chance to temper our own over-heated heads with direct, unmediated experiences of the planet we share.

What we know in our bones we tend to carry along with us in our oldest stories: our ascent to new spiritual heights for vigor and authenticity depends on us to lie down—artza, down to the ground. What are we at heart if not b’nei adam, earthlings?

Questions for Thought/Discussion (Consider leaving your thought as a comment to this article.)

How do you think Jacob’s dream would have differed if he had not been connected to the earth? Do you think that it would have been able to occur?

How have you become disconnected or connected with the earth? How has this affected your spiritual journey? How has this affected your sense of tikkun olam (repair of the earth) in environmental matters?

Find a place where you can connect to the earth and spend some time there. Is there somewhere close by to your home, workplace, etc. where you can go often, or a place further away where you go on special occasions? Describe your experience(s) there.

Have you ever been to some place you experienced as holy? What was it like?

Tazri'a-Metzora: Sickness, Separation, and Openings by Ellen Dannin

Divrei-Torah Editor — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 09:46:02 -0400

Dr. Ellen DanninEllen Dannin sees Tazria-Metzora (Leviticus 12-15), a portion that deal with the priests' handling of disease, in a new light after going through knee surgery. Ancient sensibilities became more resonant with her own experience.
Just as with us, life then must have been punctuated with all sorts of disabilities. Just as with us, for some the causes were known, while others were a mystery. And also just as with us, illness is inevitably linked with blame. Yes, what was a bad knee-joint like that doing in a nice girl like me? you may ask. I certainly did.

Read Dr. Ellen's Dannin's Dvar Torah.

Omer Teaching: Constructing Sacred Community by Rabbi Brant Rosen

Derek Rosenbaum — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 14:45:18 -0400

Parashat Terumah is one of those portions that can be the bane of every Bar or Bat Mizvah kid: a seemingly endless litany of picayune details regarding the construction of the Mishkan (Tabernacle). What on earth can we possibly learn from this parade of dolphin skins, acacia wood, crimson yarns, loops and clasps?

If we understand the construction of the Mishkan as a metaphor for creating sacred community, the lesson should be obvious: details matter.

I’ve been acutely aware of this lesson as JRC constructs its new synagogue building. In addition to the many details that come with a construction project of this magnitude (e.g., fund raising, location, budget, design, zoning, etc.) our board made one important decision early in the building process: that we would build our building in the most environmentally sustainable manner possible. Guided by the sacred Jewish value of Bal Tashchit , we have now begun construction on what we intend to be the first certified “Green Synagogue” in the world.

Artist Rendering of New JRC Building Under ConstructionSpecifically, this means our congregation is participating in a process known as LEED certification – a system designed by the US Green Building Council. LEED stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design and it is the nationally accepted benchmark for the design, construction, and operation of high performance green buildings.

LEED certification is based on a grading system, with points awarded for commitment to five key areas: sustainable site development, water savings, materials selection, indoor environmental quality, and energy efficiency. Buildings that garner 52 to 69 points achieve the highest level, or Platinum status. The next level, Gold, is awarded to buildings that achieve 39 to 51 points. (I am proud to report that JRC is currently well on track to achieve Gold status).
Much like the “checklist“ for the ancient Mishkan, the list of LEED items in our new synagogue building is substantial and exhaustive:

A white, reflective roof, which will help our air conditioning system to work more efficiently, especially during peak usage hours.

A tight, energy conserving shell, with thicker walls and more insulation that retains more cool air in the summer and more heat in the winter.

Windows made of special glass that lets in more natural light and less heat from the outside.

An HVAC system will be computerized and divided into zones, designed to only cool or heat those areas that are actually in use.

A sanctuary calibrated to heat or cool from the floor to about seven feet up, so as not to waste energy in the upper levels of the room.

A ventilation system that will use motion and CO2 sensors to let in the requisite amount of oxygen for ventilation at any given time.

Recycled concrete from 100% of our old building’s façade and front steps, which was ground up and reused in our new building’s foundation.

100% reclaimed cypress wood to be used on the building’s exterior, insuring that no new trees will be cut down.

20% of the overall building materials to be manufactured locally, and 50% of the interior wood in our facility to come from certified sustainable forests (i.e., forests that do not engage in the practice of clear cutting.)

As JRC now knows all too well, details do matter. During the planning for our new building, we have fought hard for every item on the list above, and many, many more besides. In so doing, we have come to understand that sacred space is not defined by the physical building per se, but the process by which it is built. As Terumah teaches, a sacred community is ultimately defined not just by what it does, but how it does it.

After all, even though the ancient tabernacle does not exist any more, the process of building the Mishkan remains very much alive in our collective Jewish imagination. The rabbis teach that the description of building the Mishkan, in fact, is symbolic of the Ma’aseh Bereshit—the sacred work of Creation. In constructing the Tabernacle, the Israelites were invited to reenact the creative process by which God created the Universe itself.
In the end, the imperative of Terumah echoes the classical Zionist slogan Livnot U’lehibanot—To Build and be Built. Through the process of creating our new building, we are discovering the true meaning of sacred community.

See the announcement of the LEEDS Platinum award for JRC in January 2008 at http://www.jrf.org/JRC-greenest-shul

[We encourage readers to respond to the questions below using the commenting feature. Ed.]

Questions for Thought and Discussion:

What can you do in your home to honor the sacred ethic of energy efficiency in your own home?

In your congregation?

How do you know precisely how far to go? How do you calculate when a certain approach is “not practical&rdquo, or &ldquotoo costly”?

Rabbi Brant Rosen

Brant Rosen is the rabbi at the Jewish Reconstructionist Congregation in Evanston, IL. A Los Angeles native and graduate of UCLA,he received his rabbinical training and ordination at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, where he received the Berger Memorial Prize for Practical Rabbinics upon his graduation in 1992. He previously served at Reconstructionist congregations B'nai Havurah (Denver, CO) and Kehillath Israel (Pacific Palisades, CA) before coming to JRC in 1998. He lives in Evanston with his wife Hallie and their sons Gabriel and Jonah. Rabbi Rosen blogs at Shalom Rav.