Shabbat-O-Gram for January 26

Shabbat-O-Gram

 
 

From the photo exhibit "Faces of Prayer," 

which I took in at the Austrian Hospice, Jerusalem,

an oasis of serenity in the midst of the Old City.

The quote is perfect for Tu B'Shevat

Click here to see more photos and read about the exhibit 

Shabbat Shalom!

It's good to be back.  I know it has been an eventful few weeks here while I've been away, and I wish to join with everyone here in extending my condolences to Cantor Fishman, as well as all who have suffered loss over the past month.  I also want to thank those who filled in for me in various ways, including those who led Torah study on Shabbat and helped with pastoral tasks.  Our professional and lay leadership really stepped up on a number of levels.  Thank you all.  The first leg of my trip was Jerusalem, where we celebrated the bar mitzvah of Andrew Jaffe-Berkowitz.  Here is his d'var Torah, and I must add that the service, along with a special dedication the next day at Yad Vashem, was among the most meaningful b'nai mitzvah I have had the privilege of attending. 

 

We've got a dizzying array of events for all ages coming up.  This Friday at 6, a family Kabbalat Shabbat, "Finding Judaism at the Movies" followed by our main Kabbalat Shabbat service at 7:30 (childcare will be provided), featuring our choir on Shabbat Shira (Shabbat of Song).  And then on Shabbat morning, "Shabbat in the Round," which by popular demand will now be a monthly occurrence, begins with some breakfast at 9:30.  On Sunday, we celebrate Tu B'Shevat with an Ice Cream Seder.  On Tuesday and Wednesday, our iEngage series continues with a class on the impact of 1967 Six Day War and then on Thursday, Rep. Jim Himes will hold a town hall here.  

Then next week, Temple Rock and the World Wide Wrap.  I got back just in the nick of time!

Coming Attractions

Tu B'Shevat is Wednesday. Here are some resources from the archives:

- What Trees Can Teach Us - secrets from the "Wood Wide Web."

- Source packet on Tu B'Shevat and Jewish Sustainability

- Cocka-doodle-doo B'Shevat:  A Primal Calling, a Moral Awakening

- Hazon's Tu B'Shevat reading list

A reminder to go online and sign up now if you want to join us in Israel this summer.    

Also, it's not to early to discuss Passover.  We have four major Seder-related events coming up.  All are important and it's easy to confuse them.  So here they are, so you can save the dates:

-          Women's Seder, Tuesday, March 13

-          Interfaith Seder at Grace Farms, Thursday, March 22

-          Chocolate Seder and Family Shabbat Dinner, Friday, March 23

-          Congregational Second Seder, Saturday, March 31

The Congregational Seder is the only one that is actually on Pesach.  It's a real Seder designed to meet the needs of all generations (with a few compromises here and there).  Cantor Fishman and I will be leading it and we would love to have you join us.  Last year's was a lot of fun.  Since people often make their Passover plans very early, we are reaching out now to see who will be coming and who would like to help us plan.  Please contact our office to let us know.

 

India and Nepal: Some New Friends

I'd like to introduce you to some wonderful new friends I made these past few weeks - about a billion of them.

We live on a swiftly shrinking planet, so I was glad to see how the other half lives, half a world away.   When my flight to India veered over Tehran and Kabul, I knew I was going to a place unlike any I'd ever experienced.  That turned out to be absolutely true. 

I'll be unpacking this journey for a long time - honestly, for the rest of my life - but I wanted to begin this debriefing by sharing with you some of the faces I encountered and the new friends I made.  Most are not Jewish, though I visited a number of synagogues and met some extraordinary people among India's tiny Jewish communities in Mumbai and Kochi.  But the new friends I made were people (and other living things) of vastly diverse backgrounds.  As soon as you hit the tarmac in India, you are overwhelmed by the country's intensity.  The colors, the traffic, the smells, the crowds, the scenes of life and death that become commonplace but never routine - and the pure fervor of their religious life.  I experienced sacred places and ceremonies of Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, Christians, Muslims and the Jain faith.  I saw magnificent temples and temples so small they literally fit on a person's head.

Add to all of this the fact that I was coming off of five days spent in Jerusalem during Christmas (which is purely noncommercial there), along with a bar mitzvah and Yad Vashem, and I can't imagine how anyone in this world could have spent a month with so much sacred intensity.  Oh yes, and throw in the Himalayas, which enabled this trip to take me from looking at the world's lowest place (the Dead Sea, which can be seen from Jerusalem) to its highest.  It was truly mind-blowing.  The lowest, the highest, and everything in between - everywhere, it seems, that heaven and earth meet.

There is so much that I will be sharing, but let me begin with some photos of my new friends.  Allow me to make some introductions:

And keep in mind I'll be giving a full slide presentation here on Sunday, Feb 11 at 7:30 PM.  

Immediately below is the video I took of Sarah Cohen, 95, reciting her morning prayers from her home (and shop) in the part of Kochi (Cochin) known affectionately - and not condescendingly - as "Jew Town."

  

Sarah Cohen, 95, reciting her morning prayers in Kochi (Cochin), India, 1/14/18

And here are some other friends we made along the way...

 

This Israeli botanist showed us his childhood synagogue that has been lovingly restored, on a hillside that also houses a Hindu temple, Syrian church and a mosque - perhaps the only place on earth where such coexistence happens.

Inside the Chendamangalam synagogue.  the Kochi area has about three dozen Jews, coming from two different groups, both of whom have been there for many centuries.  Of course, the two Jewish groups don't get along.

 

Mumbai synagogue

 

 

A Hindu shrine in Nepal

A ghat along the Ganges in Varanasi

 

Gulls on "Mother" Ganges

Funeral on the Ganges, Varanasi

Preparing the body

 

Kathmandu

School outing in Mumbai...

 

...and the principal

Narlai, a small village in Rajastan, India

 

Narlai

 

Dhulikhel, Nepal

 

Dhulikhel, Nepal, just after sunrise, with the Himalayas in the background

 

Breathtaking Jain temple in Rankapur

 

Some wear their religion on their sleeve.  And yes, these two in the marketplace of Mumbai are wearing their temples on their heads.

 

A village near Agra

 

The view from a rooftop in that village

 

Agra

 

A young lama in Kathmandu

 

A Buddhist festival in Kathmandu

 

A family strolling in Mumbai - the colors of India bombard the senses

 

Cow in traffic

 

Cow catching a train, near Rothambore

 

A "quiet" street in Varanasi

 

Our new friend Lakshmi (don't tell our dog Chloe).

 

Lakshmi showing off

 

The view from atop another elephant named Lakshmi

 

We were charmed by this snake

 

We made a number of furry friends

 

This one in Kathmandu

This dog in the Spice Market of Old Delhi seems to be barking out commands, but dogs are third class in the Indian animal caste system, definitely taking a back seat to the cows and elephants, who can do no wrong (and are also gods).

 

Amorous Parakeets, Jaipur

 

This rabbit was for some reason brought to Humayan's Tomb in Delhi

 

Elephants at a Hindu festival in the Kerala...

...imagine St Leo's Fair, but with half naked men and elephants

 

The farmer's market in Udaipur - the country is a vegetarian's Nirvana

Amandola scores the winning t...Wait, how'd that one get in there?  

The Super Bowl prediction comes NEXT week!

Shabbat Shalom!

Rabbi Joshua Hammerman

"Faces in Prayer" Exhibit at the Austrian Hospice, Jerusalem

TBE Bar/Bat Mitzvah Commentary: Andrew Jaffe-Berkowitz on Vayechi (delivered in Jerusalem)

Merry Christmas!

Woops, wrong speech!

Thank you all for coming.  It means a lot that you all came so far to be here with me.

My portion is Vayechi.  In this portion, as Jacob’s life is coming to an end, he’s getting his affairs in order. 

One way he does that is to organize his family’s matters as well as his own.  In one instance, he crosses his hands in blessing his grandchildren Ephrayim and Menashe, in order to make sure that Ephrayim is seen as the leader.  The funny thing is, he’s the younger one, and in the ancient world, the older sibling always came first.  This signals that the ways of the past would not always be the same as present practice.  We have to think differently.  Creativity is a key to growth and you can never let yourself fall into a rut.

As some of you know, I have been writing computer code for the past three years.  I’ve created dozens of computer games in my spare time.  In a football game that I created, for each play there are around 4,000 possible results – and I’ve built in a code that randomizes the outcomes based on where each player is and the skill of each player.  I update it, so that if someone is having a bad season or is injured, I can take them out of the game or lower their skill level.  Of course I also lift their ratings if they are doing well.  There might be some bias here, in favor of the Giants, although this year   (pause) let’s not even go there.

My point here is that with billions of possible outcomes, one game played will never be exactly the same as the prior one.  The past can’t govern how you act moving forward.  Jacob expressed that perfectly with his crossover move.

Also, with coding, you have to be sure to keep in mind where you started and the goals that you had in mind.  Jacob does that too.  He makes his family promise that when he dies, they will bring his body back to Canaan.  In that way he encourages them to go back to their roots, to go back home, even though he knows that they are going to live in Egypt for many generations.

The lesson here is that we should never forget from where we came – the code that makes us who we are. That’s an important lesson for me, too.  I’ve always stayed close to my Jewish roots, and by becoming bar mitzvah here in Israel it really adds lots of extra meaning to the experience.  But what makes it even more special is that I also have deep personal, family roots.  My great grandfather Eddie, one of the men for whom I’m named,  was a survivor of Auschwitz.  His whole family was killed in the Nazi death camps– which also means that a large part of my family was killed.  But here I am, on what would have been Eddie’s 97^th birthday.   His Hebrew name Yehuda is also my first Hebrew name.  It is also the Hebrew name of Judah Piasecky, a boy from Drohiczyn, Poland who was murdered by the Nazis  at the age of 14.  He is my bar mitzvah twin and tomorrow I will be going to yad vashem for a special ceremony linking our lives.  That name, Yehuda - that Eddie, Judah and I share, is also the word for “Jew,” and therefore, as a Jew, I am a testament to the survival of the Jewish people in our homeland – the same place to which the Biblical Jacob asked his kids to return.

My middle name Daveed, was given to me to honor my uncle David.  I know David always wanted to go to Israel but was never able to because of his condition.  So now, as I bear his name, here I am fulfilling his dream. His dream of returning back to the roots of his heritage.

Also, in David’s honor, for my mitzvah project, I have been  volunteering at the Special Olympics in Connecticut, specifically in scoring the bowling competitions– since I know that David won a lot of trophies in bowling, all of which sit proudly on display in my room.  I’m also collecting sports equipment for the special Olympics athletes to use in their various tournaments.  It’s another way to pay tribute to my heritage.

So I hope this can help you understand why today is so special for me.  And why like Jacob, this journey back to my roots is truly meaningful.  Like my football computer game, there were virtually an infinite number of outcomes of who I would be.  But the code encrypted in my DNA and in my family roots have made me the bar mitzvah that stands before you today.

Once again I want you all to know how much it means to my family and me that you made such an effort to be with us today.  By being here, each of you have written a line of code into the story of my life. 

Swastikas in India (click to enlarge)

At Gandhi Memorial

Swastikas alongside Stars of David, Kochi