Midatlantic

Or Hadash joins "YES" coalition

Shelley Rosenberg — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 12:58:27 -0400

Has Or Hadash always been welcoming to lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and transgendered people? Yes! Has Or Hadash been officially listed as a welcoming congregation so that people searching for a synagogue will know that? Not until now!

At the December (2008) Board meeting, the leadership of Or Hadash voted to become a member of the Yes!Coalition, an interfaith council of faith communities that welcome sexual minorities, their families and friends. The Coalition organizes the Guide to Welcoming Congregations, an online list of welcoming congregations throughout the five-county Philadelphia area. Until now, only 12 of 120 listing congregations were synagogues, and Or Hadash was not one of the 5 Reconstructionist congregations listed. [Note: Since December, the Coalition has expanded its listing to approximately 300 congregations, including at least 15 synagogues and Jewish organizations.]

The Coalition, which is a project of the Interfaith Working Group, undertakes projects that speak to the religious diversity and justice concerns of the LGBTQ community. In existence since 2001, Yes! has sponsored or supported several conferences, the interfaith New Freedom Seder, and the first Philly Pride Interfaith Celebration. The organization is currently undertaking a reorganization and outreach effort that will expand the Guide to Welcoming Congregations, activate a Speakers Bureau, and plan and coordinate outreach and events that will further the Coalition’s goals. To that end, Shelley Rosenberg, a current Board member and former president of Or Hadash, has joined the organization’s central council as liaison to the Jewish community.

It is also worth noting that Or Hadash is part of the Reconstructionist movement, which has been on record with resolutions supporting LGBTQ inclusion in its member congregations, rabbinical association and rabbinical college.

Now, Or Hadash can truly state: Yes, we are welcoming. And, Yes, we are actively reaching out and extending that welcome to all.

For more information see JRF's resources on LGBTQ inclusion http://jrf.org/node/1742 , the YES! coalition website, http://www.yescoalitionphilly.org/, and the YES! Coalition outreach efforts featured in the Jewish Exponent, http://www.jewishexponent.com/article/18401/.

To visit Or Hadash in Ft. Washington: http://jrf.org/orhadash/

Students Run For Wellness, Capture Beth Israel Award

Lisa Tuttle — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 09:58:50 -0400

Students Run Philly Style runners competing in the 2009 Philadelphia Marathon.Congregation Beth Israel of Media, PA, today announced that Students Run Philly Style has won its 2009 “Friend of the Community Award.” Students Run Philly Style is the only program in Philadelphia that sets up mentored training programs for students to try running as an outlet for their energy. Many students who have participated have enjoyed better health and more focus in school. The award will be given to program director Heather McDanel, following 8PM Shabbat services at Beth Israel on Friday, May 8.

Based on a similar initiative in Los Angeles, Students Run Philly Style connects students with adult mentors who help them imagine and accomplish goals beyond their dreams, including the completion of a marathon. The program has been credited with delivering powerful results for youth, including increasing high school graduation rates, improving health, providing safe choices after school and developing positive relationships with caring adults. This past November more than 60 students from the program ran the Philadelphia Marathon, and teams of hundreds of student runners are regularly seen at local runs such as the Run for the Monk 5K, scheduled for June 5 in Springfield.

This innovative program has been endorsed and supported by a wide range of organizations, including the Robert Wood Johnson foundation, the Philadelphia Foundation, and the William Penn Foundation.

Students Run Philly Style and Heather McDanel will be honored at a ceremony to be held at Congregation Beth Israel on Friday, May 8 at 8:00 PM. The public is warmly invited to attend. For further information, contact Congregation Beth Israel at (610) 566-4645.

The Friend of the Community ceremony with remarks by Ms. McDanel is presented by Beth Israel Social Action and Religious Practices Committees, with underwriting by the Jewish Federation of Philadelphia.

Since 1998, the Social Action committee of Congregation Beth Israel has presented the “Friend of the Community Award” to individuals or groups whose work in Delaware County exemplifies the Jewish value of “Tikkun Olam,” or repairing the world. Members of Beth Israel participate in a range of community projects, such as serving home-cooked meals at the Life Shelter in Upper Darby, teaching reading to children, computer skills to shelter families in Chester and collecting donations for MAZON, the Jewish Response to Hunger.

Mishkan Shalom Scholar-in-Residence Shabbat, April 24-25: Peacebuilding in the Holy Land

Lisa Tuttle — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 22:18:02 -0400

Friday April 24 and Saturday April 25 at Mishkan Shalom, 4101 Freeland Avenue, Philadelphia

Yehezkel LandauMishkan Shalom in Philadelphia invites you to a special “One Book Mishkan” weekend program: Peacebuilding in the Holy Land with Scholar-in-Residence Yehezkel Landau, Faculty Associate in Interfaith Relations at Hartford Seminary and Co-Founder of Open House Center for Jewish-Arab Coexistence.

Professor Landau will discuss the weekend's theme with particular focus on the book The Lemon Tree: An Arab, A Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East by Sandy Tolan.

Friday Evening Services: April 24 at 7:30 pm

Program immediately after: “Healing the Holy Land: Interreligious Peacebuilding in Israel & Palestine”
Story of The Lemon Tree with discussion and questions
Reception to follow

Saturday Morning Services: April 25 at 10:00 am

Study Session will be part of the services: “Biblical Resources for Peacebuilding: Lessons from Genesis"
Reception to follow

For more information call Lillian Sigal, Chair, at 610-642-2376 or contact the synagogue office at 215-508-0226.

This program is co-sponsored by the Library & Israel Committees of Mishkan Shalom & The Reconstructionist Rabbinical College.

Yehezkel Landau coordinates an interfaith training program at Hartford Seminary for Jews, Christians and Muslims called “Building Abrahamic Partnerships.” He directed the Oz v’Shalom-Netivot Shalom religious Zionist peace movement in Israel in the 1980s, and from 1991 to 2003. Co-founder and co-director of the Open House Center for Jewish-Arab Coexistence in Ramle, Israel, he lectures internationally on Jewish-Christian-Muslim relations and Middle East peace issues. He is co-editor of the book Voices from Jerusalem: Jews & Christians Reflect on the Holy Land (1992).

Birkat HaHammah 2009- "The Blessing of the Sun", a Global Jewish Event

Rabbi Shawn Zevit — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 11:33:45 -0400

North American Solar and Renewable Energy Campaign in the Jewish Community

The year 5769 (2008-2009) will be the little known Jewish year of “Birkhat HaHammah” the “blessing of the sun.” Every 28 years, the ancient rabbis demarked a time in the Jewish calendar that celebrates the ceremonial return of the sun to its original place in the cosmos during creation.

JRF, as part of a national coalition participated in this rare event to focus on solar power and energy stewardship. Our commitment to a dynamic Judiasm on a Sustainable Planet will continue!

See www.blessthesun.org and the Birkhat HaHammah blog

Traditional sources and the complete ritual service

Enjoy a song for the Sun performed by Rabbi Shawn Zevit

Words available courtesy of Kolot

Calculate the timing for your local gathering for the ritual and education about solar energy

Jewish Exponent Article, March, 2009

Cleveland Jewish News Article, April, 2009

JRC, Evanston, IL, Chicago Tribune Article

Birkat Hahama from the perspective of a scientist

How the Sun "Sings" from the Stanford Solar Center

Yoga "Sun Salutation" Practice

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Ritualwell.org managed through Kolot: The Center for Gender Studies at RRC has also uploaded resources for Birkhat Hachamah

Additional JRF Resources on Judaism and the sustainability:

http://jrf.org/omer2008-enviro

http://jrf.org/node/1264#enviro

http://jrf.org/omer/2007

"Eating Deliciously and with Conscience" at Or Hadash in Fort Washington

Lisa Tuttle — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 14:57:32 -0400

Lani RaiderJoin members of Or Hadash: A Reconstructionist Congregation in Fort Washington, PA, on Friday, April 24 for a talk with Professor Lani Raider, Associate Professor at the Culinary Institute of America. Raider will speak on “Eating Deliciously and with Conscience: How We Can Support the Environment with Our Food Choices". The food choices we make now are more important than ever before. Eating is not a neutral act; our food consumption reflects and impacts much more than merely the calories needed to sustain life. Our daily food choices are a gateway to our past, our present and our future.

Professor Raider has worked as a teacher, caterer and food researcher both in the United States and Israel. She is currently on faculty at The Culinary Institute Of America, Hyde Park, New York.

The talk begins at 8 pm and will be held at Or Hadash, 190 Camphill Road, Fort Washington, PA 19034. The public is invited to attend. For more information, please call 215-283-0276.

Just in Time for Purim: A New Case for the Or Hadash Megillat Esther

Lisa Tuttle — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 09:34:59 -0400

Rabbi Joshua Waxman displays Or Hadash's new megillah case.At Erev Purim services, members of Or Hadash: A Reconstructionist Congregation in Fort Washington, PA, were treated to the first public showing of the custom made case which was designed to hold their internationally recognized Megillat Esther.

The birch wood case was designed and built by craftsman David Hale of Vermont. The calligraphy which wraps around the case was written by Rabbi Kevin Hale, the Sofer whose artistry is reflected in the layout and writing of the scroll itself.

Read the fascinating story of Rabbi Hale's creative partnership with Or Hadash members to craft their own Megillat Esther.

Or Hadash 2009 Scholar in Residence Shabbat a Great Success

Lisa Tuttle — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 13:31:16 -0400

Submitted by Gail Morrison-Hall

Dr. Rumee Ahmed and Dr. Ayesha ChaudhryThe 2009 Or Hadash Dickstein Scholar in Residence Shabbat was held on Friday February 20 and Saturday February 21. The congregation was pleased to welcome Dr. Rumee Ahmed and Dr. Ayesha Chaudhry, Assistant Professors of Religion and Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at Colgate University. Drs. Ahmed and Chaudrhy participated in three lively, engaging and enlightening sessions.

The first session on Friday evening focused on modern Muslim conceptions of Islam and its place in the world in the context of the last 3oo years. Saturday morning’s expanded Torah study focused on the week’s Torah portion and analogous passages from the Qur'an, asking how we might make spiritual meaning of difficult sacred texts. Saturday evening’s session titled, Intimate Conversations: An Insider’s View of Living as a Muslim in 21st Century America, was a thoughtful frank discussion led by Rabbi Joshua Waxman on topics of contemporary concern.

The forthright, open and honest interchange during the entire weekend made for an extraordinary event. The congregation’s response to the weekend was overwhelmingly enthusiastic. The tone for these well attended sessions was set on Friday evening when the couple, who are married, mentioned their delight in being back at a Reconstructionist congregation. They related that while undergraduates at Brown University they often joined with a Reconstructionist Havurah for Friday evening services (led by R. Serena Eisenberg, RRC.’02), as a means of extending their own spiritual activities. (Friday is a special day of prayer for Muslims). Or Hadashers are hoping the scholars will pay a return visit to the synagogue to continue the dialogue begun during this year’s Scholar’s Shabbat.

Ayesha S. Chaudrhy is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Middle Eastern And Islamic Studies at New York University. She is also a Doctoral Fellow in the Religion Department at Colgate University. Dr. Chaudhry is from Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

Dr. Rumee Ahmed is an Assistant Professor of Religion and Middle Eastern and Islamic Civilizations at Colgate University. He received his doctorate from the University of Virginia in Religious Studies, having written his dissertation on the construction of Islamic legal narratives. Dr. Ahmed is from the suburban Washington, D.C. area.

Rabbi Sheila Peltz Weinberg to lead Mindfulness Shabbaton at Mishkan Shalom

Lisa Tuttle — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 11:04:15 -0400

Rabbi Sheila Peltz WeinbergRabbi Sheila Peltz Weinberg, a pioneer of Jewish meditation and spirituality and founder of the Jewish Institute for Jewish Spirituality, will lead a mindfulness Shabbaton (Sabbath weekend) on March 13 and 14 at Mishkan Shalom, the Reconstructionist synagogue in the Roxborough section of Philadelphia.

In four religious services beginning Friday night and ending Saturday night, Rabbi Weinberg – who teaches spiritual practice to rabbis -- will guide the congregation into Shabbat through uniquely crafted teachings that weave together mindfulness practice, Torah, traditional liturgy and a deep commitment to social justice. The theme of the weekend is “Heart Break and Restoration, the Ever Present Possibility of Forgiveness and Teshuvah (change).” The public is invited to all events, including a potluck vegetarian meal at 6:30 p.m. Friday.

“Sheila is a masterful teacher who, with clarity, humor and grace, helps us see into the truths, challenges and blessings of our lives,” said Rabbi Yael Levy, Mishkan Shalom’s Rabbinic Director of Spiritual Development.

Rabbi Weinberg will lead a service beginning at 7:30 p.m. to welcome Shabbat with mindfulness, prayer and song. The 10 a.m. Shabbat morning service will include mindfulness practice and teachings, meditative movement, chanting and reflection. There will be a 4:30 p.m. Mincha (afternoon) service, followed by a meal, moving into a

7:45 p.m. Havdalah service. Following that service, Rabbi Weinberg will read from her recently-completed memoir.

Contemplative practice, combining meditation with Jewish story and symbol, is a relatively new development in Judaism. “Spiritual practices train our minds, shape our consciousness and mold our character,” Weinberg says. “We undertake spiritual practice in order to change in some way, even if it is only a change of perspective.” But that change often leads to a commitment to tikkun olam, “repair of the world.”

"Jews Change the Way the World Eats" Talk at Or Hadash on March 28

Lisa Tuttle — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 11:19:52 -0500

Philadelphia chef and cookbook author Aliza Green to speak at Or HadashSaturday evening, March 28 at Or Hadash Reconstructionist Congregation, Fort Washington, PA. Open to the public. For more information call the synagogue office at 215-283-0276.

Submitted by Shelley K. Rosenberg

The first chocolate, vanilla, and citrus fruit plantations in the New World were started by Jews. The smoked, pickled, and salted fish business—that was Jewish, too. Jews from the Canary Islands owned the earliest sugar plantations in Brazil. The dried fruit and nut business? Also Jewish. All of this information, and more, rolls off the tongue of experienced chef and cookbook author Aliza Green like sweet butter off a hot brioche, as you can’t help but catch her infectious excitement about the history of Jewish food.

Green will bring that history alive with a talk and tasting and, because the program will be held immediately following the Havdalah ceremony that marks the close of the Sabbath, with its requisite spices, she’ll begin the program with spices, a Jewish business in India close to 2,000 years ago, and spicy recipes.

Jewish traders changed the way the world eats, Green explains, having had a substantial influence both because they moved throughout the Diaspora and had an influence on people in other countries and because of the trust they built up with fellow Jews who knew that goods would be paid for, even long distance, and that ingredients would be controlled to be certain that they were kosher. Certain occupations, like being a “frigatore,” a maker of fried foods at street stands, were permitted to Jews in Roman times, and they became specialists in them. She also makes a connection between the agrarian basis of the Jewish calendar and the centrality of food to Jewish holidays and celebrations, such as using dried fruits and nuts for shalosh manot at Purim. This, Green points out, is unique to Judaism.

Green’s love of food, especially Jewish food, and the unique history surrounding it, began in childhood, when her father’s work as a theoretical physicist allowed the family to travel and live throughout the world. By age 10, she was cooking for her family and, as an adult, her love of languages, history, literature, and cultural studies, as well as food, led her to make the connections that now fuel her passion. Self taught, having left college because they “weren’t teaching her what she needed to know,” Green made her own opportunities, serving as chef at such Philadelphia favorites as Under the Blue Moon, DiLullo’s, and Moonstruck.

Eventually, Green began consulting with restaurants on their menus, developing recipes, and even doing food styling for television. She wrote food columns for the Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News, co-authored a cookbook with Georges Perrier, and then went on to author or co-author ten more cookbooks, including the recently published Starting with Ingredients: Baking (Running Press, 2008).

The idea for her next book, Sweet and Sour: How Jewish Traders Changed the Way the World Eats will begin to be explored in the program at Or Hadash, Green’s own synagogue. “Eating sweet and sour together is a very Jewish way to cook, and it’s also a recognition of a very Jewish outlook on life,” she says. “Think about breaking the glass at a wedding, or combining sweet charoset and bitter horseradish at Passover, for example.” She will provide an overview of the history, as well as a taste of the specially prepared foods. The menu will include onion and poppyseed kichel with sour cream and herring; “pan levi,” or biscuits made with mace, a traditional recipe from Curacao, that will be dipped in spiced hot chocolate; and “stuffed monkey,” a Sephardic recipe for pastries made with a filling of dried fruits and cashews, that comes from a Jewish bakery in East London.

For Green, and her lucky audience, it’s not enough simply to talk about food; it needs to be experienced. Thus, the program will be as delicious as it is informative. Green will also have her new books available for sale that evening and will be happy to autograph copies.

A Long Journey Leads to Rabbi’s First Pulpit: At String of Pearls, a Lifelong Dream Finally Fulfilled

Lisa Tuttle — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 15:09:24 -0400

This article is reprinted with permission from the New Jersey Jewish News.

Donna Kirshbaum led several lives before becoming a rabbi. (Photo by Marilyn Silverstein)
by Marilyn Silverstein
NJJN Bureau Chief/PMB

September 9, 2008

The scene is crystal clear in Rabbi Donna Kirshbaum’s memory. She was eight years old and had just finished reading a child’s biography of George Fox, founder of the society of Quakers.

“I remember leaning against the fridge and telling my mother, ‘I’m going to lead my people the way George Fox led his people,’” she recalled.

This summer, close to half a century later, that childhood dream became a reality as Kirshbaum took her place as religious leader and educational director of Princeton’s only Reconstructionist congregation, String of Pearls.

The product of what she calls “a devoutly nonreligious upbringing,” the 57-year-old Kirshbaum journeyed toward her first pulpit the long way around. A native of Philadelphia, where she was raised in the secular Jewish tradition of the folkshul, she has led lives as a teacher of classic Greek and Latin, a mother, a cellist, a dairy farmer in the Missouri Ozarks, and a religious-school principal.

Ordained by the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in Wyncote, Pa., this past June, Kirshbaum holds a bachelor’s degree in ancient Greek from Swarthmore College and a master’s degree in Latin literature from the College of Notre Dame of Maryland in Baltimore.

She taught classics off and on for 22 years at the Kimberton Waldorf School in Pennsylvania, studied cello for two years with a member of the Amadeus Quartet near London, co-owned a Missouri dairy farm for six years, and lived in Baltimore for 21 years, teaching the classics at her alma mater and helping to found the Bolton Street Synagogue there.

Along the way, Kirshbaum had three sons — Ben, now a physician at New York University; Matt, a graduate student in architecture at Yale University; and David, a senior forestry major at the University of Vermont. The night before her ordination, she married Louis Friedler, a professor of mathematics at Arcadia University in Glenside, Pa. The couple resides in Swarthmore.

Throughout her life, the thread that has woven everything together has been her love of the religious life, according to Kirshbaum.

“To put it simplistically, I must have the religious gene in my family,” she said as she sat in her Princeton Township office. “I could never get enough contact with people who had religiously informed lives. I think this is just part of who I was from birth and before.

“But I put it off and put it off, and it became the classic dream that festered but wouldn’t go away,” she said. “Then, when my middle son left for college, I got the beginning of a taste of the empty nest and I thought: Now or never.”

At the age of 51, Kirshbaum applied to RRC and began a six-year journey toward becoming a rabbi.

“For the first time, I really felt shot out of a cannon,” she said. “I was on a very, very clear trajectory. A certain diffuseness that had characterized my life was gone.

“Those six years — it was like a continual Shabbat,” she said. “To be in my 50s and just stop everything — it was so sweet.”

To the sweetness of those years, Kirshbaum added the spice of a diverse work experience. While at RRC, she served as an assistant at the college’s Academic Coalition for Jewish Ethics; held student pulpits in Baltimore and Detroit; studied chaplaincy at Johns Hopkins Hospital; worked with Jewish students at Swarthmore, Bryn Mawr, and Haverford colleges; traveled to Ghana with the American Jewish World Service; and served as a rabbinic intern with CLAL-the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership in New York, and with Greenfaith, a New Brunswick-based interfaith environmental advocacy and educational group.

While at the seminary, Kirshbaum won a number of awards, including the international Whizin Prize of RRC’s Center for Jewish Ethics, the Driesen Prize in Science and Judaism, and the Bartnoff Prize for Spiritually Motivated Social Action.

Challenges of diversity
When she arrived at the moment of ordination, Kirshbaum said, “it was a dream come true. It was also really bittersweet — leaving the nest and having to do the hard and important work of taking the access points to Jewish wisdom and making them truly accessible to other Jews.”

That is the work Kirshbaum has taken up at String of Pearls, a 52-family congregation that describes itself on its website, www.stringofpearlsweb.org, as “a proudly diverse and inclusive Jewish congregation welcoming young and old, singles and families, Jews by birth and by choice, non-Jewish partners in interfaith couples, gay and straight, the spiritually settled and the spiritually restless, in short, all who are willing to commit to the integration of community, worship, study, and acts of loving-kindness (gemilut hasadim) and repair of the world (tikun olam).”

The congregation meets for Shabbat, holiday, and family services at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Princeton and runs a cooperative religious school on Monday afternoons at the Princeton Day School.

“I fell in love with these people,” Kirshbaum said. They are “very committed to community-based Judaism. I really see a nice, equal weighting of the three traditional pillars of Torah, avoda (worship) and gemilut hasadim here.”

As she meets with each congregational family, she is finding the classic case of “two Jews and three opinions,” the rabbi said.

“I find that just delicious and very, very healthy — that kind of diversity,” she said. “I think people appreciate the informality and the fact that we don’t have a building and we have to draw our identity from other places. I think that is all to the good.”

But the diversity of String of Pearls also poses a challenge. “We have to find a way to integrate not just non-Jewish partners, but the children, who will tell you with absolute seriousness that they are ‘half and half,’” she said. “We have to really make those children feel not just welcome, but valuable members of the Jewish people without Judaism dissolving into a kind of wisdom tradition only.”

Kirshbaum brings to such challenges “the excitement, optimism, and energy of being fresh out of school,” she said. “I think of the congregants as my study partners, my spiritual partners, my partners in trying to create more justice in the world.”

As she begins her journey at String of Pearls, Kirshbaum said she thinks every day about how rare it is to get to live out a lifelong dream.

“I’m aware of what a privilege it is to start all over again,” she said. “As my oldest son said to me at my wedding on the night before my ordination, ‘So, Mom, now you have a marriage. Tomorrow you’ll have a career. What’s next?’