SAVE THE DATE FOR OUR DECEMBER TOWN HALL MEETING:WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 9TH AT 7:00 P.M. Beth Israel – The West Temple will host a Town Hall Discussion with Kristin Warzocha, President and CEO, Greater Cleveland Food Bank; and Lona Gruber, founding director of the SCAN Hunger Center Pantry. Our guests will discuss their paths to leadership, challenges in their positions, goals and needs for the upcoming holiday season and other issues. Questions may be submitted via Chat Room during the live stream. Here is the YouTube link to the livestream: https://youtu.be/b2J2jRfQdb
. NEXT Wednesday, March 3rd at 7:30 p.m. as we continue planning for our Annual Women’s Seder In preparation, Trisha asked us to think about the following:* if we could choose one item meaningful to us to include on the Seder plate, what would it be? * the afikomen, the four children, the plagues, and… ? If you missed the first session, we hope that you will want to join us for this second one and for our Women’s Seder. We are looking forward to being together again,Barbara Schwartz, Chair, Circle of Friends(Beth Israel’s Rosh Chodesh Group) Join Circle of Friends Meeting by Zoom:https://us02web.zoom.us/j/95683038364?pwd=YWk4WUdhY01aaTlsTHBZdy84SHV1QT09 Meeting ID: 956 8303 8364Passcode: 830638Dial in: 646 876 9923 US (New York)
THIS Sunday, October 18th – BI-TWT’s Religious School families, along with other Jewish families from the west side of Cleveland, will be participating in a “Kids’ Tzedakah Drop Off”Noon – 2 p.m. Sponsored by the Jewish Federation of Cleveland’s Annual Campaign for Jewish Needs
Our students and their families have been making Tzedakah boxes and collecting monies for THIS Sunday… Families will be asked to drive up to the temple parking lot and have their children donate their tzedakah. There will be a team from the Jewish Federation of Cleveland collecting the money. The kids will also receive an ice cream treat, from Pierre’s Ice Cream. Please wear your masks; all proper physical distancing procedures will be followed. Super Sunday is Jewish Cleveland’s largest one-day give-a-thon. Join hundreds of members of the Cleveland Jewish Community in volunteering virtually this Sunday! You can sign up to make phone calls, write thank you notes, and help secure critical funds for the annual campaign for Jewish needs. Follow this link: BE A PART OF IT ON OCTOBER 18 >>
Our yearly Torah reading cycle begins again this week, as we roll the scroll to the very beginning – Bereishit – Gen. 1:1-6:8. In Gen. 1:27 we read: Be’tzelem Elohim bara oto; zachar un’keivah bara otam – In the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. In his commentary on this verse, Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik* asks what it means that being made in the image of God is directly followed by man being created as two sexes, and suggests that male and female are to be taken not only in the physiological sense but also in the spiritual/metaphysical sense as well. What is this “spiritual/metaphysical sense”? Every soul consists of both a male and female persona – a spiritual androgyny. The combination of these elements can be found in each individual: the dynamic and the active… and the affected and the passive. Each of us both influences and is influenced; we are both a giver and a receiver. Only through the development of both attributes can we attain our full spiritual potential. Soloveitchik offers the example of a teacher and students. As the teacher teaches, he (or she) is the giver, while the students receive. At one point in the lesson, however, a perceptive student may ask a particularly incisive question that leads the thoughts of the teacher in new directions. At this point, the student becomes the giver, and the teacher becomes the receiver. The roles are not fixed. Teachers can inform… and be informed. Students can be informed… and can inform… We are blessed as physical beings; and we are also blessed spiritually. When we actualize our blessing of being a receiver, we open ourselves to absorb spiritual wealth and beauty. When we actualize our blessing of being a giver, we use our spiritual energies to give to others. We cannot do this by ourselves. We are dependent upon each other in order to develop our best selves. I invite you to consider times in your life when you have been a giver… and a receiver… and how you might continue to develop those attributes in the future… *Soloveitchik is considered the outstanding figure of modern Orthodox Judaism in 20th century America, synthesizing Orthodoxy and modernity, and seen by some to have explicated Judaism in terms of universal philosophical and religious ideas.
The Torah reading for Sukkot is Lev. 22:26-23:44, and includes the “fixed times of the Eternal, which you shall proclaim as sacred occasions.” (23:2) Sacred occasions – Mikra-ay Kodesh. This term is used ten times; each “fixed time” – beginning with Shabbat – is a sacred occasion, another opportunity for holiness. We tend to associate location with holiness. One can imagine the pomp and circumstance that accompanied the festivals in Jerusalem during Temple times. Our own memories of being in our own sanctuaries for holiday celebrations bring up images of modern-day pomp and circumstance that perhaps we recall with a sense of holiness. And now our own homes have become our sanctuary spaces. And our challenge is to enter into the mindset of holy space. I would like for us to also note that each fixed time is a sacred occasion… What does it mean to have sacred time? Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel writes about this in his book The Sabbath: “There is a realm of time where the goal is not to have but to be, not to own but to give, not to control but to share, not to subdue but to be in accord. Life goes wrong when the control of space, the acquisition of things of space, becomes our sole concern.” Heschel explains that Shabbat becomes a “palace in time”… and not only offers us an opportunity for weekly spiritual communion and time with friends and family, but it also has the potential to help shape the way we live the other six days of the week. Rabbi Or N. Rose expounds on this: Will our time with friends and family make us more sensitive to the needs of other human beings? Will our time celebrating the grandeur and beauty of nature make us more sensitive to the needs of the earth? Will we be able to hold in our hearts and minds the realization that God is the supreme author of life and that we are called upon by the Divine to serve as co-creators of a just and compassionate world? In brief, can we carry with us something of the Sabbath consciousness through the rest of the week? The mikra’ay kodesh – Torah’s sacred occasions throughout the year [Shabbat, Pesach, Shavuot, Rosh HaShanah, Yom Kippur, and Sukkot] offer us continuing opportunities to “be” and to consider our connections with others, the natural world around us, and with the Divine. In this way, holiness is not confined to space, but across time.
