Temple Emanuel Bulletin February 2012
Temple Emanuel Bulletin December/January 2011
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Temple Emanuel Bulletin October 2011
Temple Emanuel Bulletin September 2011
Temple Emanuel Bulletin August 2011
Temple Emanuel Bulletin June/July 2011
Temple Emanuel Bulletin May 2011
Temple Emanuel Bulletin April 2011
Temple Emanuel Bulletin March 2011
Temple Emanuel Bulletin February 2011
Temple Emanuel Bulletin December 2010/January 2011
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Temple Emanuel Bulletin October 2010
Temple Emanuel Bulletin September 2010
Temple Emanuel Bulletin August 2010
Temple Emanuel Bulletin June/July 2010
The highlight of our first Mitzvah Day in 1997 for me and for many people was the consecration of part of the Peter Cooper Memorial Garden for the burial of old prayer books.
Because I have been encouraged to print my Torah Weekend Shabbat morning sermon at Beth El Congregation in this month’s Temple Emanuel Bulletin, I encourage every Temple member to read it and take it to heart.
January’s devastating earthquake in Haiti, followed by the February snows that blanketed and buckled the Mid-Atlantic states, jarred my memory back to a conversation in Israel many years ago. Alice and I were with Israeli friends.
The observance of Shabbat has been a theme running throughout many of my High Holyday sermons...
The observance of Shabbat has been a theme running throughout many of my High Holyday sermons
No place on earth is like a cemetery. No place on earth summons so many tears, nor evokes so many memories. Nowhere else on earth does heaven dwell so palpably, so heavily as at a cemetery.
In the days leading up to the November 27 Annapolis Conference on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, people asked me to forecast what might come of it. I reasoned that because expectations were so low, perhaps hopes could run high.
I have been studying it, teaching it, and praying it so long that I hardly doubt that I will live again. I’ve found it in the Bible, in rabbinic literature, in the prayer book, in modern literature, and in the personal anecdotes that so many people have shared with me. I have not yet figured out precisely which time-honored Jewish belief will come to pass – if I will be reincarnated in another lifetime, or be resurrected from the dead in the Days of the Mashiach, or if my soul is immortal in ways that my mortal mind cannot comprehend, or combinations of the afore-mentioned – but Judaism has taught me too much for far too long for me to think that this is my one lifetime.
The many years that I’ve read The New Yorker are the measure of the pleasure I derive from the magazine. In addition to the superb articles, the cartoons are always clever and often hilarious. For the very best, I’ve considered clipping them out and placing them in a conspicuous place. But I always resisted this urge until a recent issue arrived with an irresistible cartoon. So I clipped it and taped it on the shelf behind my desk at Temple.
When I was an infant, my family moved from an apartment to a house. One day, my older sister was playing in the front yard of our new home when a curious neighbor engaged her in conversation. “What are you, little girl?” the nebby neighbor asked. With all the pride a five year old can muster, my sister answered, “I’m a Republican!”
A second Temple Emanuel Shabbat band, the Mahler Family Band, debuted at our Feb. 23 Shabbat service.
To begin 2007, I wanted to write an epitaph for 2006. Thus the above title kept ringing in my ear. But no article, essay, poem or diatribe then came to mind. Rather, more titles, more epitaphs, and more headlines for this disturbing and difficult year kept ringing in my ear….
My trip to Israel in October marked my eleventh time in Israel. Every trip to Israel has been memorable, but one of my trips had to be the worst. My October trip filled that ignominious bill.
Had things worked out as I planned, hoped and prayed, I would be leaving for Israel this month, leading a two-week Temple Emanuel mission to Israel. But my plans were cancelled and my hopes and prayers dashed last spring when the trip failed to muster sufficient interest.
As I write in mid-August, the war between Israel and Hezbollah may be hours away from a ceasefire brokered by the United Nations. As you read this in early September, who knows what may be going on? But even if a ceasefire is holding and Katyushas no longer rain down on Israel, awful damage has been done. And lest we think that this war raged 5,000 miles away from us, please ponder how close to home the Katyushas really struck.
During 1998 and 1999, a long-range planning committee convened to assess Temple Emanuel’s circumstances at the end of the twentieth century and to forge a vision for Temple in the twenty-first century. The committee members, some twenty strong, represented diverse facets of Temple’s membership. They met regularly and frequently. Based on our biblical ancestor Joshua who led the Israelites from the wilderness into the Promised Land, the committee was named “The Joshua Mission.”
From month to month, I hope that you are in the habit of keeping your Temple Bulletin where you can easily access it to check the starting time of a service, the scheduling of a special event, a reminder for upcoming Yahrzeits of loved ones, and the like. If so, this is a special Temple Bulletin because you will keep it in that special place for not one month but two. I deem this fortuitous because I have a special message that I ask you to consider not merely for two months but twelve.
The year of mourning for my mother concludes this month. The first way to understand the meaning of this year is by the calendar.
When you read this, the Steelers’ Super Bowl victory may have diminished to a warm memory. But the deadline for writing this Bulletin article was the day after the Super Bowl. So as I write, I am slightly beneath the peak of elation, especially because I was at the game.
“When Adonai restores the fortunes of Zion, we are like dreamers.” Psalm 126, A Pilgrims’ Song of Ascents
Voting is like breathing for Americans. The act itself is reflexive and taken for granted. We never think about it, yet we wouldn’t ever want to forego it.
Someone called to my attention that when I wrote about three beautiful gardens that surround the outdoor Summer Sanctuary at Temple – the Weiner-Tumpson Garden, the Holocaust Garden, and the Mahler Garden – in the October Bulletin, I neglected to mention a fourth beautiful garden elsewhere at Temple.
If this Bulletin arrived late in your home, it’s my fault. Hindered by a cold, I wrote this article past the deadline. I’ve had nastier head colds, coughs, sore throats, and chest congestion than this cold. But I never had a cold that hit me harder in the brain. Stuffy, runny, congested and cramped brain: that was this cold’s most significant symptom.
Beyond the devastation, Hurricane Katrina left a myriad of disturbing images in its wake. Who did not cringe at the site of corpses moldering in the streets and coffins disinterred by the maelstrom? Such images underscore the importance of Kevod HaMet, the Mitzvah of “Respect for the Dead.”
My summer reading list included American Judaism, by Jonathan Sarna. Dr. Sarna, you may remember, was our Scholar-in-Residence for Torah Weekend in 1991, and he was as brilliant and informative as any scholar who has taught from the Temple Emanuel pulpit. American Judaism is Dr. Sarna’s unique and invaluable contribution to the record of the American Jewish experience. Many historians have written about the history of Jews in America, but Dr. Sarna is the first to write about the history of Judaism in America. That history is complex, a blend of plusses and minuses, but if I must describe it in one word, it is “dynamic.”
During a dinner in Jerusalem in June, two friends and colleagues asked me how our Temple trip to Israel has been. “Every day,” I replied, “there have been moments of tremendous insight and emotional impact, moments that affirm that life is worth living, that life is good, even holy.” I then added, “If I have one such moment a month in Pittsburgh, I consider it a good month.”
I write during Shiva for my mother. You will read this as I am about to conclude Shloshim, thirty days of mourning.
