Category: Prayer & Bible Study

I’m taking a six-session course with a young (late 40s) Reform rabbi named Alan Ullman. He tried being a pulpit rabbi for about three years, gave it up to teach teen-age through adults (young and old). He’s an itinerant, teaching in various locations between Hartford and Boston, living in Worcester. His focus is always the spiritual aspect of the Bible (or other Jewish texts), no matter what he titles his courses. It is always exciting to study with him and with the people he attracts. And he is very attractive: handsome, atheletic and dramatic. I’ve attended some of his single shot lectures and two other multi-session courses.

The current one is called Sacred Connections, meets for two hours on Monday evenings. Last session we looked at three passages: Ex. 19:1-6; Lev. 25:23; and Ex. 20:12. We got through several “connections” such as Mt. Sinai and the bush (sneh), Egypt/Wilderness/the land. Egypt: the very narrow place, no room to turn around. Wilderness: vast, no boundaries, no focal point. Place of radical shift. I won’t go through the whole discussion (and Rabbi Ullman pulls the most interesting comments and observations from the students).

I will just tell you the bottom line conclusion from the three texts: “The land is Mine. You are resident strangers with Me. Honor your father and mother that you may long endure on the land which God is giving you.” The land is God’s. We are God’s. We’re temporary and we don’t own anything. God’s gift of “the land” is the gift of a spiritual relationship with God. Even if “the land” is a specific place, the giving “is” (present tense) and not forever. It’s all conditional. “If you listen, then you will hear.”

I come away from these sessions in a state not unlike the one after the births of my children: exhilarated and tranquil at the same time.

We had an “anniversary” Minyan this past Monday, marking the 4th year of the minyan in its present incarnation. We put out the word that Rabbi Fuchs would give a brief dvar torah during the service and everyone should bring a supper for a communal meal afterwards. Dad and I supplied the desserts and the sparkling cider. Well, we had 30 people and it was a lovely occasion. Rabbi Fuchs’ attendance (almost always when he’s in the synagogue) has been a wonderful boost for the minyan.

We keep hearing that Beth Israel is one of the few Reform synagogues (in the country!) to have a daily minyan.

At the Rabbis’ request we are now going to put all the people we’ve “trained” to lead the service (about 10) into a pool of people who will go to homes to lead a shiva service for bereaved families who want such a service on the second-third nights after burial. The rabbis always do the first night. I know this is standard operating procedure for Conservative and Orthodox congregations and it’s certainly time for Reform Jews to be more observant of the rituals for death and mourning. All of this is spiritually very meaningful for me.

When you get to the Haftarah on Yom Kippur morning, try to think of me as I have the aliyah at Beth Israel of the blessings before and after the Haftarah reading. Since the after-blessing is much longer (for Yom Kippur which is also Shabbat), than what I learned for my bat mizvah, I have had to spend a part of every day practicing: learning the new words and the additional tropes. I think I will acquit myself well enough to deserve the honor.

Happy Birthday to Lisa! To me one of the special things about the Jewish High Holy Days is that they always coincide with Lisa’s Birthday. You always come in for an extra amount of thoughts at this time of year. We’re sending much love to you all — along with our prayers and hopes for a good and sweet year. Sometimes I think “my prayers don’t help much.” Other times I think, “maybe without my prayers things would be even worse!”

No mileage in talking about Bibi and Israeli politics and diplomacy. … I read each issue of The Jerusalem Report from cover to cover and then pray – daily. I’ve become very aware of how often, in the Siddur, we pray for peace. And those prayers are OLD!!

Delivered by Bernice on 9 May 1997, Sabbath Eve Service which included B’not Mitzvah Ceremony

Leviticus is a book full of words about sacrifices. Are its words relevant to our lives today? The Biblical scholar Everett Fox, shows me a way to say “yes!”

Professor Fox sees a similarity between Leviticus and the opening chapters of the Book of Genesis where God brings order out of chaos by making distinctions and separations. God’s finished product is a peaceful paradise. So also do the commandments of Leviticus seek to make order out of the chaotic processes of human life, an order which will insure the survival of the community, perhaps even restore it to a state of utopian perfection.

Our Torah portion, Kedoshim, is that part of Leviticus called the Holiness Code. Chapter 19 is the heart of that Code. Not only is it physically near the center of the Torah; it is at the center of Judaism’s value system. The root meaning of kadosh is separation in order to sanctify a person, place or thing for sacrificial purposes. But, as Torah makes abundantly clear, sanctification has implications for every aspect of life, from eating habits to observing Shabbat, from personal relations to business practices.

Rabbi Danny Shiff taught us to think of sanctification as “making a distinction which elevates our behavior to a higher level of importance.” In Judaism, as in other religions, the ideal for human behavior is to make no distinction between proper ethical conduct and religious practices. What Leviticus 19 does so powerfully is to extend holiness to virtually all areas of life. Thus Chapter 19 commands us, among other things, to dispose of sacrificial food at the set time and to pay the laborer promptly; to shun idolatry, yet show kindness to strangers who are idolators by origin. “What does the Lord require of you?” The prophet Micah’s answer was “Only to do justice, to love goodness, and to walk modestly with your God.” Leviticus 19 begins with the priestly answer to that question: “You shall be holy, kedoshim, for I, the Lord your God am holy!” The command is to all individuals in the entire community – kedoshim is a plural word.

We got a gorgeous plaque from Temple Beth Israel. … Our plaque, read out at the annual meeting, says:

Congregation Beth Israel
Volunteers of the Year
1996

BERNICE AND SEYMOUR SALTZMAN
For your caring leadership, commitment and devotion in bringing the Daily Minyan back to the Congregation, for nurturing it through your presence day after day, season upon season, for encouraging and guiding others to conduct the Service and for providing us all with the community opportunity for daily kaddish, worship and prayer.

We had a scholar-in-residence at the synagogue this weekend. Rabbi Norman Cohen, the S-I-R, is a student of midrash. He gave four incredible lectures dealing mostly with our dysfunctional first family, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Some marvelous new ways to refract the biblical characters. Too much to describe in a letter. … I am never-endingly amazed that each swing through the Bible yields something new to contemplate and learn.

I started a new 18-session course at the synagogue last Monday night, called introduction to Judaism. It’s required for my acceptance into the bat-bar mitzvah group. At first I said, “Me? Take an intro to Judaism course?” However, when I saw the book list, I realized that all the books are new to me (probably fresh versions of things I’ve been reading for 40 years). Another reason the course will be interesting is the makeup of the students.

When the course began some 15 years ago, it was described as for people planning to convert. About 3-4 years ago they changed the name and immediately Jews began taking it. The Jews are a various lot: people with non-Jewish spouses who have decided to (a) convert or (b) promised to raise the kids as Jews, the kids are now ready to education and the non-Jewish spouses, while not planning to convert, wants to be part of the child’s experience. Others described themselves as Tuesday, Thursday, Sunday dropoffs at religious school who never learned anything and now, as adults, want to know what they missed.

June 10, 1995
I’m preparing to be the leader of the Bible study group next Saturday. Most of the year the two rabbis alternate weeks as leader, but during the summer they ask regulars to take turns leading. It involves studying the parsha in detail and find commentary (Talmudic, midrashic or modern) to illuminate the text. It’s always impossible to cover the entire portion of the week, so usually the rabbis home in on one or two sections or ideas.

Mine is Numbers 8-12:16 and contains about seven different events. I’m inclined to go no further than the opening verses, about the placing of the menorah, and start by asking the question, where did the Biblical writers get the design for the menorah, which in Exodus is described in minute detail.

The answer is, from the nature and landscape of Israel. I’ll use the books I have from Neot Kedumim to show pictures of the moriah (salvia) plant, olive branches and almond buds which all contribute to the design. This approach will give me the opportunity to explain why the menorah was chosen as the emblem of Israel. The Neot Kedumim materials also include much about the spiritual significance of the various plants and trees, illustrated with Biblical verses. It seems a good way to connect the people in the group as well as the ancient text with modern Israel.

Doing this assignment has shown me how much I’ve missed spending long periods of time with Biblical and Jewish literary materials. I love hopping from one passage to another and connecting concepts and ideas.

At the time when one should be joyous—be joyous. And when it is time to mourn—mourn.

Life begins and life endures in the presence of pain, with joy always hovering near. The rhythm of life is ever-changing. Neither pain nor joy is permanent.

We may allow ourselves to mourn, to feel deeply the pain and anguish that the death of a cherished loved one brings us.  With healing time we can discover that, out of every disappointment and failure, out of every disallusion and loss, we can, if we choose, generate new energy and hope. If we draw on the strengths that Judaism bestows on us, we can learn to accept ambiguity, to wrestle with doubts, to live in that existential place between evil and good, between doubt and certainty, between grief and joy.

That place is called faith and in it God stands next to us. Standing there we hold fast to our invincible optimism, to our trust in a just and loving God ruling the world, and to our conviction that the world God created is good.

Grief can keep us mired in bitterness and anger. Or it can send us back with renewed strength, to help — even in the smallest way — repair the good world when and where it is broken.

Let us choose to affirm our hope in the future, which is Judaism’s way to honor and remember all of those whose lives were precious to us and whose struggles, sacrifices and triumphs are our ever-living legacy.

[undated]

This afternoon I went to a Jewish Education Teach-In at Beth El synagogue. …

The second hour I heard a woman named Ruth Fagan who teaches Talmud at the Jewish Theological Seminary. She looked no more than 40, had a build like Roseanne Barr, a mop of dark brown curly hair, and was dressed in a billowy skirt, overblouse and tunic/vest — every piece a colorful, different print. But she was brilliant! Her subject: the women in Genesis — our foremothers. The room was jammed with about 50 women (and 3 men!). She held her Hebrew Tanach, rattled off in Hebrew the passages she wanted to cite, giving her own running translation, and her own commentary delivered with dramatic intonation. As much as as often as I’ve read the patriarchal stories, I am constantly delighted and amazed to get new insights with every reading. Ruth Fagan is one of those moderns who reads the Bible like the rabbis of old — closely, paying attenion to every word. She said she was led to study the mothers because, when she blessed her daughter on shabbat — “may God make you like Sarah, Rebecca, Leah and Rachel” she started to wonder: What am I wishing her to be?

What she found and showed us, from the Biblical language, was why Hadar was sent away and why Sarah prevailed. Hagar didn’t know where she was going, couldn’t see that God was offering her admittance to the Covenant. Abraham had doubts and also lacked the vision. But Sarah saw from the beginning and understood how and to whom the Covenant was to continue and her acts enabled and empowered Abraham. (In Genesis, hearing is secondary to seeing: Ishmael — God hears). Thus your davar torah on next week’s parsha.

Seymour and I are now the core of a small group that has re-established a daily minyan at our synagogue. (It lapsed several years ago….) We are both becoming adept at leading the service. We use a new prayer book that, during Tefillah, refers to avot v’emahot [fathers and mothers] – I like that! This means that we must plan Monday-Thursday to be free from 5:15-6:15 p.m. … (No, we don’t follow the sunset for starting times!) …

Saying kaddish for my mother almost daily has given me a new sense of having once again a spiritual dimension in my life. And meeting our needs (Seymour recites kaddish for his brother), we are also helping other synagogue members fill their needs. Those who wanted to say kaddish were going to other, mostly Conservative, synagogues for the purpose. Now they can come to their own synagogue.

I must describe to you the Simchat Torah service last night at Beth Israel. Picture the sanctuary with about 500 adults and children of all ages filling the middle section. We were kept out of the side sections to accommodate the main event. Which was: the two rabbis, Simeon Glaser with his guitar and Cory Weiss with his accordion, and the cantor led the Torah carriers and all the children with flags round and round the sanctuary singing and singing. All the kids then sat down.

The cantor then unwound one of the Torahs, starting at the beginning of the aisle on the east side, proceeding around the back and down the aisle on the west. Every 2-3 feet an adult held on to the scroll to keep it straight and a child held up a sign at various points along the scroll: “Noah & The Flood” – “Abraham’s Covenant with God”–“Joseph & His Brothers”– “The Ten Commandments” – “The Exodus” – etc. Then Rabbi Cory read the final portion (in Hebrew, translating as he went) of the death of Moses. Rabbi Simeon then dashed across the bima to the beginning of the scroll and did the same thing with “b’reshith”. (They had portable microphones!) After rewinding the Torah, Rabbi Simeon walked up and down the center aisle giving a Bible quiz. Every time a child gave the right answer he/she got a pumpkin from off the bima which was decorated with all the foliage and fruit from the sukkah. The whole service took about an hour and a half, starting at 7:30.

The new rabbis at Beth Israel are wonderful! The senior, Simeon Glaser, is 37. His assistant, Cory Weiss, is 27. They are both good speakers, enthusiastic, dramatic, poised with significant content to their sermons which are organized, unpretentious and full of fresh insights. They are also excellent musicians and singers! How fortuitous for me, now that I will be attending so regularly. Also, Rabbi Lindenthal retired and Teferet Israel merged with Beth David (Uncle Moe’s shul), so I would not have had my favorite rabbi and synagogue to go to this year for second day Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. I think … Beth Israel will become, once again, my spiritual home.

Rabbi Glaser grew up in Palo Alto and Beth remembers him as one of her camp counselors. Her sister, Claire, remembers that he was her co-counselor and his band played at her and Ed’s wedding. (But Rabbi Glaser can’t remember the wedding!)