The Scroll, Shavuot/May 2010

From the Rabbi
“You Can’t Take it With You”



The week before this Scroll went to print, while wrapping up the Book of
Leviticus, we read parashat Behar. This Torah portion (which often shares a
week with the next one, Behukotai) is basically one chapter, Lev. 25 — and
it’s at the very top of my list of favorite biblical passages. Behar outlines
the every-seven-year Sabbatical during which the  elds lie fallow, and the
every- ftieth-year Jubilee when debts are forgiven, slaves are freed, and land
is returned to its original owner — the Jewish source for the notion that
“you can’t take it with you”.

Leaving aside the scholarly debate over how thoroughly these teachings were
practiced and enforced during Temple times, as a values statement there are
many vital messages for us today in this teaching, from the political to
the personal. Four short examples:

ECONOMIC: what a great balancing act the Yovel/Jubilee is, between
unrealistic communism and unbridled capitalism! The Torah is way ahead of modern
society in suggesting a middle way — a way that preserves people’s personal
incentive to work hard and get ahead (and thus advance society as a whole),
while recognizing that imbalances accrue across the generations and becoming
self-replicating after a time. Be capitalist for a whole generation, but every
 fty years level the playing  eld. The implications of this value system
for our household economics are enormous, since Judaism teaches that you can’t
take it with you — and oughtn’t leave it all for the few lucky enough to be
your heirs, either. (And yes, if this moves you to think about including
Adat Shalom in your will, please give us a call!).

ECOLOGICAL: In our chapter we are commanded: “you shall not sell the land
beyond reclaim, for the land is Mine; you are strangers and sojourners with
Me.” This is the consciousness that the world so desperately needs now — the
land is not ours, and our land use decisions need to take a Higher Power
into account. Plus a bonus:  Would you believe a plug for sustainable
agriculture, as in letting your  elds lie fallow every so often to re- x nitrogen
into the soil and to prevent erosion? It’s right there in the Torah! You can’t
take it with you — but you can leave a lot of damage behind you if you’re
not careful.

ENERGETIC: As the land needs a rest every seventh year, so does the farmer
(plantation owner and migrant fruit-picker alike, the Torah goes out of its
way to remind us). And so do we. Why has ‘sabbatical’ been retained only in
academia and religion, when everyone needs and deserves a chance to step
back from their day-to-day work, and to recharge their batteries?
Shabbaton/sabbatical is a value for us all. (I’m not complaining that it’s still in vogue
for clergypeople — and grateful to this community to be contemplating two
three-month chunks of sabbatical, mid-January-to-mid-April 2011 and
April-through-June 2012 — more on that in a future Scroll). You can’t take it with
you - but while you’re here you can refocus periodically on what really
matters, and recharge so that you do it better going forward.

EMOTIO-SPIRITUAL: As in macro-economics, so in the inner realm — the
Jubilee reminds us that the goal of life is not to accrue ‘stuff’ and stocks and
savings, but wisdom and friendship and meaning. I had occasion to offer a
eulogy during the week of parashat Behar for a lawyer who happened to work on
estate issues, but more importantly was a beloved dad and grandfather,
husband and friend. And this was the upshot: you can’t take it with you. Important
as his work was, the Torah reminds us that all of life is one big
estate-planning exercise. All ‘things’ depreciate; it’s only a matter of time before
we give it all back, one way or another. But a life well-lived is of
enduring value, and the love and goodwill generated in that lifetime does in fact
continue beyond our numbered days.

You can’t take it with you — but you can leave a legacy of love.

The decision is ours to make, with every priority we set and every bit of
time we allocate. Remember, every minute of every day — we don’t take it with
us, but we do make a difference.

• Rabbi Fred Scherlinder Dobb

_________________

Rabbi George’s Reflections
Hope: The Message of Spring

“My Heart is In The East”, wrote Judah HaLevi, and so is mine. I yearn to
return to Jerusalem, at least for a visit. Meantime, I read everything I can
get my hands on about Israel, these days with fear and trembling, as the
news seems all bad, even allowing for the journalistic preference for scandal,
violence, and conflict. But it’s spring, as any fool can see, even if one is
unaware of the Jewish ritual calendar that has brought ‘round Passover,
counting the omer, and, soon, Shavuot. And this spring is more magnificent than
ever. (Sue claims says I say that every year). Given how winter’s snows
devastated the trees and bushes in the woods wherein I often prowl, I am amazed
to see how gloriously leaves, shrubs, and flowering plants have emerged
from the wreckage this year. Is it possible that Israel will somehow emerge
from the present storms into calmer waters if not now, at least sometime during
my remaining years? No one knows, of course, but I keep looking for a
harbinger of better times. I found one in “Cautious Respect,” a recent article in
The Jerusalem Report, that relates how a Palestinian Israeli and an Israeli
government official worked together to change the way Palestinian citizens
are treated by airport security personnel.

In the United States and even for those of us who are highly unlikely to be
subjected to special scrutiny, going through airport security is trying. In
Israel, where the threat of terrorist attack is constant, security has to
be more effective, and apparently it has been, though for many of us who are
not suspect, the procedures seem less onerous than in the U.S. because
Israeli security personnel question passengers one by one and decide what further
screening of them and their baggage is necessary based upon the interview
plus other information that is apparently available to the security apparatus
via computer. But Palestinian Israeli airline passengers have not fared so
well. Until recently they were routinely pulled out of line and given much
more careful scrutiny than Jews. That’s not surprising because Israel is such
a tempting terrorist target, and virtually all of the murderers have been
Arabs. Often, the Palestinian Israelis were asked numerous and repeated
questions, and their baggage was unpacked, sometimes not once but twice. Strip
searches were not infrequent, and even if Palestinian Israelis arrived very
early for their flights they were often the last to board. Even Palestinian
Israelis traveling on government business, athletes traveling with Israeli
teams, and those who spoke fluent Hebrew, faced this enhanced scrutiny. The
treatment embarrassed and humiliated them. As Abu Shindi, a Jewish-Arab
coexistence activist and a director of the Citizens’ Accord Forum, which works for
full Palestinian equality in Israel, remarked, “Even when I am representing
Israel I am still an Arab.” Not only did the treatment of Palestinians
frustrate and infuriate them; it also carried a message: they are second-class
citizens. As a result, many Palestinian Israelis stopped using Ben Gurion
Airport and crossed the border into Amman, Jordan to fly to their destinations.
In recent years, as Palestinian Israelis prospered along with their Jewish
fellow citizens, more and more of them traveled by air for work or on
vacation. Their preference for the Amman Airport thus cost the Airport Authority
and the airlines serving Israel economic harm.

Over the years, many Palestinian citizens filed formal, individual
complaints against security personnel and the procedures. But Abu Shindi and the
Citizens’ Accord Forum he heads decided to take his community’s grievances to
Gabi Ophir, the director of the Israel Airports Authority. Unexpectedly,
Ophir asked Abu Shindi to teach the Israeli security personnel and work with
them to improve the treatment of Shindi’s minority community. (As you probably
know, Palestinians constitute about 20% of the Israeli population.) Three
years later the number of complaints had fallen by 80%, even though, as a
result of the discussions with the Airports Authority leaders, the complaint
procedure has been improved and tight deadlines for responses have been put in
place. As a result of the Abu Shindi-Gabi discussions Palestinian Israelis
nominated by Abu Shindi and his Forum and Jewish Israelis taught and teach
airport screeners to understand and respect Palestinian cultural norms and
sensitized them both to their own anti-Arab prejudice (fueled, of course, by
war and terrorist attacks) and to the feelings even necessary procedures
generate. Important changes have been put in place. Now when women’s
undergarments are removed as part of a baggage check, rather than being offensive, the
process is discrete because guards understand the intense embarrassment
public display of intimate garments causes Palestinian women. Now, too, when
children and parents are separated, the security personnel, trained to ease the
children’s fears, approach them gently with toys and candy to ease their
anxiety, and fathers, whose dignity is important in the patriarchal Palestinian
culture, are not threatened or dealt with harshly in front of their wives
and children. Beyond that, some security procedures have been eliminated as
unnecessary.

The Israeli authorities have also established an Arabic language web site
that Palestinians may use to check in before they fly (not all Palestinian
Israelis speak are fluent in Hebrew), and the Airport Authority has hired
Palestinians and Druze to serve as security personnel both to reassure
Palestinian Israelis at the airports and to reinforce the continuing education in how
to treat Palestinian Israelis that security personnel continue to receive.
At the same time, Abu Shindi and his Forum have brought back to their
community information that has led to its having a greater understanding of the
reasons for security procedures and how to navigate them successfully. And as
the Airport Authority has seen the benefits of the mutual efforts, some of
the educational and procedural reforms it implemented have been put in place
at border crossings as well. Of course there are glitches and departures
from the new professional norms that stress polite treatment and respect of
Palestinian passengers, and complaints have not been eliminated. But the
progress is real and palpable.

Spring and its blessings are largely inevitable. By contrast, the growth of
understanding and accommodation between Jews and Palestinians sometimes
seems as unlikely as the sprouting of tulips in December. On the right and
among some schools of orthodoxy contempt for Palestinians is a frequent refrain,
and from time to time hooligans attack Arabs in Jerusalem. Calls for
expulsion of Israel’s Arab population are no longer surprising. On the other hand,
in the West Bank and Gaza, children are still being taught that Jews have
no legitimate right to live in Israel, and are still being prepared for
martyrdom. And even now, when Hamas is less aggressive than it was before
Operation Cast Lead, rockets are occasionally launched against southern Israel,
there are occasional assaults on the border crossings, and lives continue to be
lost. Although the United States continues trying to foster a “peace
process,” the Palestinians are refusing to meet directly or indirectly with
Israeli negotiators, the freeze on construction across the Green Line is porous
and, despite Palestinian conditioning of any talks upon a total freeze, the
Israeli government is adamant that Jerusalem is not included in the
government’s construction ban. I think it is fair to say that the politics of “the
situation” do not augur well for a near term, negotiated settlement of the
political issues.

As the Jerusalem Report story demonstrates, however, understanding and
mutual accommodation between Muslims and Jews is not impossible when individuals
in authority exercise restraint and men and women of good will reach out to
one another in a peaceful, rather than a confrontational mode. Such events
don’t ordinarily appear in our media, and they probably are infrequent. But
religion, in my view, should enable us to see the sparks of hope scattered
among the clouds of hostility that engulf humankind and to do what we can to
be counted among the peacemakers. That’s why I have summarized “Cautious
Respect.” May the sparks be uplifted, as the Kabbalists have taught, until one
day their warmth engulfs the politicians and other “movers and shakers” who
all too often and not always inadvertently, bulldoze rather than build paths
to peace.



• Rabbi George Driesen

________________

Hazzan’s Notes
What’s on Your Shabbat “To-Do” List?

At the end of the Sh’ma paragraphs in the sidur is the instruction to wrap
the tzitziot (fringes) of the talit around the finger, to look at them and
remember the mitzvot of the Holy-One-of-Blessing. And it continues: “and
don’t look after the wanderings of your heart or whatever catches your eye.”
Long before our modern age with its smorgasbord of all-you-can-eat constant
stimulation, our ancients understood that impulse of the mind to go in many
different directions at once and the need to direct our thoughts and our
consciousness. Our tradition acknowledges the human tendency to go to what is
immediately gratifying. It tells us that the real riches lie beyond the
immediate, and that reaching those riches takes discipline.

Among the mitzvot, observing Shabbat is one of the key practices outlined
by our ancestors for us to follow. It is a structure in which we can focus
our consciousness, an alternative to the work-a-day world. Many of us are all
too familiar with a feeling of Shabbat as a time of restriction. The Talmud
lists many restrictions — don’t do this and don’t do that. For example:
don’t spend money and don’t carry any work tools. What we need to spell out for
ourselves is the universe of possibilities that are part of Shabbat
practice. The restrictions are just there to create space for the positive actions:
spending time with family and friends, singing, praying, studying Torah (and
all the sacred writings that follow it), eating especially good food,
dressing to express our joy at being alive, enjoying intimacy with our partners,
walking just to walk, sleeping, meditating.

As we enter the warmer months of the year, the daylight grows longer —
there is more Shabbat to enjoy on Saturdays. (And more time to prepare for it on
Friday afternoons.) The question arises: What will we do with elongated
afternoons? Can we ‘hold the pose’ and put off the impulse to start running
right away? There are many things to do with the time. Among the possibilities
for what to do on Shabbat, one custom in the spring and summer seasons, in
the weeks between Pesach and Rosh HaShana, many in our extended faith
community read and learn from Pirkey Avot (Ethics of the Ancestors.) This is a
tractate from the Talmud unique for its pithy, poetic language and simple adages
of wisdom. You may recognize this phrase which is carved into the wooden
panels on our sanctuary walls:

“On three things the world stands: on Torah, on Service and on Acts of
Loving-kindness.”

(Pirkey Avot, 1:2)

In other words, there are three pillars of existence acting together as a
carefully balanced tripod.

First is Torah. By this we mean not just the Five Books of Moses but all
the many texts that emerge from that beginning. By this we mean not just
sitting and reading in the most concrete way, but also engaging in the
centuries-old conversation of commentary that continues today. And we mean looking for
how the Torah informs our own personal journey.

Second is Service. The Hebrew term used is Avodah. In ancient times this
meant Temple service and religious practice in general. So it speaks to us
today about engaging in prayer, participating with the community, opening our
hearts to the words in the sidur and letting them work their effect on us, on
our need to understand ourselves as part of the greater Whole. In modern
times the word also means work — service to the world in the form of necessary
tasks. The spiritual and the every-day must go hand in hand.

Third is Acts of Loving-Kindness. By this we mean specifically visiting the
sick and comforting the mourner. These are among the mitzvot listed in the
Talmud as equal to the study of Torah. We must push past our resistance,
overcome our discomfort with reaching out to those in the community who are
passing through difficult transitions, either in health or in loss.

This is just one tiny appetizer of the collection of verses in Pirkey Avot.
They go on for five chapters, each one containing worlds of wisdom and
understanding for us to discover. Studying them on the Shabbatot between Nisan
(the Hebrew month that contains Pesach) and Tishrei (the Hebrew month
containing the Jewish new year) we create a bridge between Pesach and Rosh HaShana,
between seasons and between mile markers in our own lives.

May these warmer months provide a cue for us to thoughtfully consider what
we want to make of the long, lazy days of Shabbat.

B’vracha,

Hazzan Rachel
___________________


From the President

Chaverim

“The best-laid schemes o’ mice and men gang aft a-gley” is the famous quote
from Robert Burns poem To a Mouse that aptly captures the sense of this
column — my last as Adat Shalom Board President. My “best-laid scheme” was to
have started with a meeting of a new working group whose intention is to take
our Persimmon Tree Lane home to a new level of environmental excellence. We
had planned to meet on Thursday, May 6th and I was going to use this column
to describe the lofty goals we had agreed upon, starting with a progress
report on the project to install solar panels on the roof of our building.

Sadly and unexpectedly, my wife’s only sibling, her brother David Santo,
passed away on May 3rd after a long struggle with liver disease. The funeral
was in New York on May 5th and out of respect, the environmental working
group delayed its meeting to a later date. This “gang aft a-gley” left me
searching for a focal point for this column before I turn the Presidential gavel
over to Ruth Spodak and Garry Grossman.

Before I go further, I want to thank the Nominating Committee chaired by
Carol Feder for selecting Ruth and Garry as Adat Shalom’s incoming
Co-Presidents. They are committed and caring people who will serve us well. We are
fortunate to have them as members of our community and even more so that they
are willing to walk-the-walk by taking on this responsibility.

Back to farewell thoughts for this Scroll column. As a New Yorker and a
long-standing Yankee fan, the farewell words that most resonate for me now come
from Lou Gehrig’s remarks on July 4, 1939 (Lou Gehrig Appreciation Day at
Yankee Stadium) – “I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the
earth.” They resonate because I have been honored to work with a fabulous group
of people at Adat Shalom. I have served on a number of non-profit Boards
over the years and our leadership cadre —clergy, staff and lay folks– are the
most engaged and passionate of any with whom I have ever worked.

In these difficult economic times, many synagogues struggle with declining
enrollment and financial hardship. Some in our congregation have suffered
hardships as well. Yet our membership has held steady at about 500 member
units and our financial condition is strong. We continue to offer rich and
varied programs, and our CE21 initiative promises to create even more innovative
learning opportunities in the years to come. And therein is the achievement
as President I am most proud of – despite the treacherous waters, we held a
steady course these last few years.

I found serving as Board President to be stimulating and rewarding; a
difficult experience to leave — but after two years, it is time for new
leadership. If after reading this column you have any thoughts about stepping up to a
communal leadership position, don’t hesitate. Do it! I promise you will not
regret taking that step.

Shalom — Enjoy the Summer,

Bill Halpern
____________________

Congregational Education for the 21st Century (CE21):  Why Is This Relevant
to You?

We at Adat Shalom are doing a lot of things right when it comes to
education and learning! We infuse each year’s calendar with meaningful and rich
learning opportunities that reflect creativity and innovation, some one-time
events and some ongoing. And yet, these individual successes belie a
predicament that besets U.S. Jewish congregations, including ours. The evidence shows
that:

1. Adult education typically touches a small and already-engaged portion of
a congregation.

2. Attendance at religious/Hebrew school rarely results in meaningful
Jewish connections.

3. Teenagers are infrequent participants in synagogue programming.

It has become clear that “scattered innovation and incremental improvement
alone cannot address some of the deep structural and cultural challenges
that beset Jewish education today.”

“Michael Fullan, one of today’s leading change architects in the field of
general education, argues that the work of education reform requires that we
embrace complex change on multiple levels. Even as we work to make
incremental improvements within existing frameworks, we need as well to rethink the
nature of those frameworks themselves, to imagine better ways of deploying
and complementing them, to experiment with new models and approaches, and to
redesign the system as a whole so that it can more successfully achieve its
ultimate objective: inspiring large numbers of Jews to live Jewish lives of
meaning and purpose.”

(Redesigning Jewish Education for the 21st Century: A Lippman Kanfer
Institute Working Paper)

CE21 is a multi-year effort to rethink what we do, in order to make Jewish
learning a vibrant, pervasive, and positive force in the lives of large
numbers of Adat Shalom congregants.

Here are some 21st century learning questions for you to ponder:

1. What does Adat Shalom need to do in order to empower you as an active
agent in fashioning your own meaningful learning experience?

2. How would you shape Jewish learning as “life-centered,” so that it
addresses the totality of your aspirations, concerns and experiences?

To date the CE21 Task Force has engaged many members of the AS community in
reflecting on their own meaningful Jewish learning experiences, and
identified the characteristics that these comprised. We drafted a visionary
description of “living Judaism,” as an approach that will “deepen our understanding
and experience of how Jewish living adds meaning, joy and richness to our
lives, and how Jewish values affect our daily decisions.”

We are now using the elements from the visionary description as a prism for
an intensive period of research. Four teams, divided along demographic
lines, have begun their work gathering and synthesizing relevant research and
models from around the country. Our partner in this process is the Partnership
for Jewish Life and Learning (PJLL), in conjunction with Experiments in
Congregational Education (ECE). As participants in the Greater Washington, DC
community-wide CE21 program led by PJLL, we learn and exchange ideas with
five other area congregations that are undertaking the same process. PJLL
provides us with expert consultation for our Task Force and each of our research
teams, as well as on-line resources and tools for sharing information.

We now have forty individuals on the CE21 Task Force working through these
teams, and our last meeting was characterized by tremendous energy and
enthusiasm. We invite all Adat Shalom members to participate on these teams and
in this work. We want to thank all of those who have stepped forward thus far
to bring their thoughtful contributions to this process:

Young families (families with infants through 2nd graders): Abe Schuchman
(team leader), Hazzan Rachel Hirsch Epstein, Kim
Bayard, Barbara Rudin, Dara Feldman, Clare Geller, Debbie Goelman, Bryan Krekel,
Katherine Krekel

Families of 3rd-7th graders: Judy Veis (team co-leader), Phyllis Lerner (team co-leader), Rabbi Fred
Scherlinder Dobb, Sue Marx, Debra Fried Levin, Jerry Kickenson, Peggy Ephrath,
Andrew Levinson

Families of 8th-12th graders: Stephanie Firestone (team leader), Beth Sperber-Ritchie, Alan Mairson, Ted Berman, Laura Epstein,
Margi Helsel-Arnold, Rachel Cohen, Lora Griff, Jan Rybeck

Adults discussing adult education exclusively: Sam Book (team co-leader), Debbie Tropp (team co-leader),
Rabbi George Driesen, Bob Barkin, Myrna Seidman, Nehama Babin

We also plan to engage some of our college students when they are home for
the summer, to contemplate Jewish learning for young adults; this team will
be led by Tal Widdes.

Here, presented in order to whet your appetite, are examples of preliminary
findings that will guide our design process:

• Infants through 2nd grade: Research reveals that Jewish parents of young
children yearn for community.

• 8th through 12th grade: Jewish teens report the highest rates of any
common U.S. religion of both desiring, and lacking quality adult connections
with members of their faith (Current Trends in Jewish Teen Participation with
Out-of-School Activities, Michael Whitehead-Bust)

• Adult learning: Meaningful adult Jewish learning requires a combination
of formal (classroom) learning and informal (experiential) learning.
Experiential learning should include (a) preparation before the experience, (b)
communal/group interaction during the experience, and (c) follow-up and
re-living the experience afterwards.

Our teams need you! Do you know of any studies/articles/models that can
provide guidance for any of these demographic groups? Do you have thoughts
about how to effectively engage and inspire any of these constituencies? Do you
have some thoughts in response to the 21st century questions posed above? If
you are interested in reading cutting edge research, discussing the
embedded issues, or helping to craft alternative model/s of learning at Adat
Shalom, please join one of our teams.

In the fall, the CE21 Task Force will conduct larger, cross-demographic
conversations with the Adat Shalom community, in order to share our synthesized
findings and hear what you think about emerging ideas for educational
models. Feedback from these community conversations will then fold into designing
a model/s to present to the community in the spring of 2011.

Please contact any of the relevant team leaders or members, or the CE21
co-chairs, Debra Fried Levin and myself,
with any questions, input, or interest in participating.

Our next Task Force meeting is Monday, May 17 @ 7pm; come one, come all.


Stephanie Firestone

___________________

 From Christian Sunday School to Jewish Chaplain: Vicki Breman’s Path

Only looking back can I recognize the key events that guided me to my work
as the Pastoral Associate at Adat Shalom. I hope that sharing my story will
help our community better understand how I came to this Pastoral Associate
position.

A primary catalyst was my mother’s insistence that we all attend our Congr
egational Church several times a week. I went to Sunday School, sang in the
choir, and joined the teen youth group (where I meet my first serious
boyfriend). It was a community that celebrated with me and sustained me in hard
times.

As an adult I knew that I wanted my children to have that kind of
experience in their lives; it is one of the main reasons I converted to Judaism after
I married. Even though we moved many times when our children were growing
up, synagogue membership (or at least celebration of Jewish holidays while we
lived in Africa) was always a priority.

My mother knew me better than I had realized when she encouraged me to
enroll in nursing school. I loved it, and became a nurse at the Los Angeles
County General Hospital/Children’s Psychiatric Unit, serving youth with a
spectrum of mental illnesses.  Becoming a nurse has greatly defined who I am.

I have always had an impulse to care for others. Throughout my life people
have gravitated to me for “help”, be it medical or emotional. Work
colleagues regularly dropped by my office(s) to seek advice and be comforted.

I am drawn to being with people who are ill and/or grieving. This tendency
was enhanced when I spent many weeks with my Canadian cousin as he battled
esophageal cancer to which he succumbed at age 52. We had been very close as
children but had not seen each other in our adult years. When he called to
tell me of his illness, there was no question as to what I needed to do.

Years before, when the 11-year-old daughter of dear friends died in a
tragic beach accident, I spent one day a week for the next year with her grieving
mother. I took her to lunch, on hikes, to museums — whatever she wanted to
do that got her out of the house and into the world. It just seemed like
something I could do. She later told me that our time together had saved her
life.

The death of my mother in 1997 pushed me into over four years of therapy
and analysis, and helped me examine my life and my priorities. As soon as Joel
and I joined Adat Shalom in 1999, I found a community and a place where I
could participate fully. I felt again the sense of belonging that I had so
loved as a child.

When I retired as a lawyer in 2000 I enrolled in the Florence Melton Adult
Mini-School, took classes with Rabbis Fred, Sid and George, and learned with
Rabbi Barry Freundel, as well. I began doing Bikkur Cholim (visiting the
sick), and studied Clinical Pastoral Education. Rabbi Fred and Hazzan Rachel
generously welcomed my increasing participation in the pastoral care of my
fellow congregants.

 I knew I had found my calling as a Pastoral Associate or Yoetzet Ruchanit.


• Vicki Breman