Growing Jewishly

The sage Hillel, a great rabbi and teacher of the Mishnaic period, taught us "Do not say 'when I have leisure, I will study,' for you may never have leisure." Pirke Avot 2:4

Over the past summer in Jerusalem, I had the leisure time and the opportunity to indulge in one of my great loves, the study of Jewish text. In addition to floating in the Dead Sea with my kids, I went swimming in the sea of Talmud and drank in the ancient wisdom of our tradition with the warm, dry air in the hills of Jerusalem. While I have always made time to study in one form or another, all too often, it felt squeezed into small chunks of time. This summer I had time to luxuriate in long periods of uninterrupted studywith colleagues and friends, old and new.

Since returning home, I have continued my regular practice of studying Talmud weekly with my chevruta partner via Skype. It is one of the gifts I give to myself each week, and by extension, to our community, because I am continually learning and growing as a Jew.

 How many of you have said to yourself that when you have leisure, you will grow in your Judaism? How often have you put off something that is actually quite valuable and important to you, anticipating that at some point in the future, you will have the leisure time that you deprive yourself of today? Rather than postponing Jewish learning, greater participation in our synagogue or growing in your Judaism, the time to act is now.

We may lament that if we had started sooner we’d know more now, or could have made a greater contribution. However, now is as good a time as any to begin. As the saying goes, “The past is history. The future is a mystery. Today is a gift. That's why they call it the present.” We cannot change the past and the future is yet to come.

Let’s embrace our journey in the present. Take some time today to make a renewed commitment to your Jewish journey. Join our "Jewish Literacy" study group, sign up for the URJ “Ten Minutes of Torah” digest, join a Temple Israel activity, volunteer to help with a program or committee, make Shabbat at home, or come to services. Show your children, your peers, or your parents that growing Jewishly is valuable enough to you to make the time for it and invite and inspire others to join you.

Our ancestors provided a path for us to walk on today. As we go on our Jewish journey in the present, we have the opportunity to give a gift for the future by leaving our loved ones, our faith and our world a little stronger, a little better, through our own commitment to grow Jewishly today.

Remembering Debbie Friedman

On Sunday, January 9, 2011, the Jewish world lost a most beautiful treasure: Debbie Friedman, Jewish composer, singer, and teacher, died at the age of 59 from complications of pneumonia. On Friday, January 14th, at Temple Israel we joined together for Shabbat in a tribute to Debbie Friedman through her music.
This is an excerpt from my remarks during the service:

Debbie Friedman’s first album, Sing Unto God, came out in 1972 when I was 4 years old, the same age my daughter is now.  I probably did not have her album when I was 4, but within a year or two later, my Mom, Dad, sister, and I had gone on a family retreat with our synagogue to OSRUI in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin and discovered Debbie’s music.  My friend across the street, Laura, and I spent hours listening to that album, dancing around her living room to the energetic and uplifting sounds of guitars, drums, and Debbie’s voice rising in prayer.             



Over this past winter break I pulled out my old turntable from college and a box of albums in the basement to share some of the music from my youth with our kids.  While I was dismayed to find out that I need a new turntable and, while I also do not have the Sing Unto God LP today (although Laura’s copy played just fine, we had made multiple trips to the record store to find the reason that our copy of the record skipped), I have all of her other early LPs, and most of her other recordings on cassette tapes and CDs.  



Debbie’s music is, as many others have said, the soundtrack for the music of our lives.  I learned Debbie’s music as I learned in religious school and Hebrew school what it is to be a Jew in contemporary America.  Her prayer settings were what we sang and continue to sing in the youth choirs at Beth Emet synagogue where I grew up, in youth group, at camp, and in our congregations. My sister-in-law, who today is also a Reform rabbi, had the distinction of having a young Debbie Friedman perform at her bat mitzvah reception.  I walked down the aisle at our wedding to her music, I have sung her music at the brit milah of each of our sons and the brit bat of our daughter, and her prayer settings accompanied the levayah of my father.  



Over the years, at camp, at Women’s Rabbinic Network gatherings and in songleading classes at Hava Nashira, I have been privileged to sit with Debbie and learn from her, and to hear her in concerts at the Jewish Folk festivals in Chicago, at many NFTY and URJ conventions.  She and Cantor Jeff Klepper have profoundly influenced my musical and spiritual development, and have been beacons in the world of Jewish songleading. 

Debbie Friedman with Cantor Jeff Klepper, 2008

As Jerry Kaye, director of the Olin-Sang-Ruby Union Institute (OSRUI) in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin, which was her second home, said: "For more than 40 years Debbie’s words and music were the voice, the expression of all we value and hold close to our hearts: love of Judaism; the power of our tradition in our lives to connect, inspire, heal and provide meaning, joy and sweetness. Without doubt, Debbie was the inspiration for a new generation of worshippers…she made real the idea that art and religion are the only two human pursuits that bypass the intellect and speak directly to the soul. “

Hava Nashira Faculty 2010

Debbie Friedman started as a group song-leader at OSRUI in the early 1970s where she set Jewish liturgy to her own contemporary melodies. Her first album, “Sing Unto God”, was followed by 22 more.  She is probably best known for her setting of “Mi Shebeirach”, the prayer for healing. Her gift to the world was her amazing ability to reach people and help them pray. She understood the power of prayer and felt her gift was to be a vessel for God’s power to convey this to others.  By combining Hebrew texts with English in singable, folk-inspired melodies, she made the experience of prayer more accessible and taught us to pray with our voices in song.  She was a pioneer in gender sensitive language, and helped transform the synagogue to make a place for the God of our mothers, and to make a place for those who were standing on the margins of the community, by honoring tradition but not fearing change. Most of all, Debbie taught that a prayer service, a song session, or a concert was not about the leader or performer, but about lifting the spirits of everyone in the room, inspiring everyone to sing and pray and connect to God.

 Yet, despite the popularity of her music, Debbie Friedman struggled in the Jewish musical world for much of her career.  In the 1970s and 80s the Jewish establishment and some cantors and rabbis dismissed her music as inappropriate in the synagogue. She never finished college, and she did not have cantorial training. She was not a classically trained musician. In fact, she could not even read music. When you would ask her, “What key is that in, or what guitar chords are you playing?”, she’d say, “ It’s this one, just put your fingers like this.”  But as my mentor and teacher, Cantor Jeff Klepper, who first met Debbie at Kutz Camp in 1969, has written: “Musically she was untrained; her genius was intuitive and expressive. She could see the musical talent in others and knew how to bring it out. She understood prayer and was able to teach it in a way you could understand. Singing with her was exhilarating in ways that words cannot express.”  Debbie Friedman was officially embraced by the Reform movement decades after her music had been informally welcomed and adopted in our camps and synagogue services.  She was made an honorary member of the American Conference of Cantors and in 2007 was appointed to the faculty of our Reform seminary, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion’s School of Sacred Music to teach music and prayer to our cantorial students.

Debbie Friedman’s life and work has profoundly changed modern Jewish worship.  One of my fellow havanashirites shared that the highest level a song can reach is when it becomes so much a part of the canon that it is as if it was always there and nobody wrote it.  This is what Debbie Friedman’s music and teaching has been to modern Jewish life, leaving behind a sacred teaching of which we cannot imagine a time when it wasn’t part of our spiritual lives.
We lost her during the week of Shabbat Shira, the Shabbat of Song, the Torah portion Beshalach, of the Song at the Sea. She was our Miriam, teaching us to pray with song. And it is also during this week, that the Haftarah is the story of Deborah the prophet. Arise, arise Devorah and sing your song– Uri uri Dabri shir! Rest in peace, sweet singer in Israel.

Postscript to the sermon:

Debbie Friedman’s funeral was held in California on January 11th and over 7,000 people were able to watch the service via live internet streaming.  Since then over 20,000 have viewed the archived service.

More information and tributes to Debbie Friedman, her life, and her music, including streaming video of other concerts in her memory are at the URJ Debbie Friedman page, Debbie Friedman's website and at the "remembering debbie" page.  Debbie's music is available on her website, at URJ Books and Music, and on itunes.

Tu B’shevat and the Carmel Forest Fire

During our sabbatical in Israel this past summer, my family and I were fortunate to enjoy hiking in Israel’s nature preserves and forests, and swimming in natural pools and waterfalls.  But Israel is in the midst of a severe drought and this year during Chanukah,  the festival of lights, Israel faced a severe crisis.  A massive wildfire burned over 12,500 acres, over 5 million trees, in the Carmel Forest near Haifa.   The fire claimed 42 lives and displaced more than 17,000 people from their homes.  As the winds intensified, the flames spread across the dry forest and raged through the Carmel Hai-Bar Nature Reserve, the UNESCO BioReserve on the Carmel Mountain Range and Kibbutz Beit Oren, decimating wildlife, unique forestry and  plants, and homes, including those of Israeli Jews, Israeli Arabs, and Druze.

Over many years Israel  has reached out to assist many countries during devastating disasters.  They have sent humanitarian aid to help after the earthquakes in Turkey, Haiti, Chile and El Salvador, sent personnel and food to help with starvation in Ethiopia and responded to Hurricane Katrina and the tsunami in 2004. And we are grateful that the world responded to help Israel this time of need: the Palestinian Authority sent trucks and crews that drove for hours to help with the raging fires.  Turkey put aside the diplomatic challenges of the past year and sent fire fighting planes in formation with Greece to stop the fire.  The US, Bulgaria, and Azerbaijan all sent aid to help Israel. Russia, France, Britain, Switzerland, and Germany sent planes and helicopters. Dozens of nations sent help and expressions of support. As Danny Ayalon, Israel’s deputy foreign minister said: “It is an incredible and much needed response and is proof that Israel can count on its friends during a time of national tragedy. To these, and the many other nations that offered assistance and aid, we send our most heartfelt appreciation.”

During this month of January, we will celebrate Tu B’shevat, the New Year of the Trees.  Many of us remember the blue boxes for JNF, and bringing home a certificate from religious school for planting a tree in Israel in honor of a significant occasion – a birthday, or a bar mitzvah, or in memory of a loved one.  This year it is even more important to plant trees in Israel to aid in the recovery from this tragic ecological and humanitarian disaster.  The Jewish National Fund is committed to forestry development and soil conservation, fire prevention, and innovative solutions to alleviate the water crisis in Israel. You can help Israel by donating funds to plant trees or order water certificates, and help JNF purchase fire trucks and protective gear, and provide for firefighter training.  

ARZA, the American Reform Zionist Association, is also accepting donations to help rebuild the affected areas.  Keren B’Kavod, ARZA’s humanitarian aid project, provided hot meals, food and supplies for the firefighters, and assisted people evacuated  due to the fire. Rabbi Gaby Dagan, rabbi of Reform congregation Ohel Avraham and the Leo Baeck education center in Haifa wrote:

“On Saturday morning, a Bar Mitzva ceremony was held in Ohel Avraham synagogue. A few minutes before the ceremony began, one of the guests told me that Elad Riven, a young school student from Haifa and a friend of the family, had died in the fire. It was not clear to the family that the ceremony should go ahead in such circumstances.

Once again, we must cross familiar and unfamiliar boundaries of joy marred by profound sadness. We said the “Shehechiyanu” prayer for the young boy who had just become a man, and with the same breath and the same tears we said Kaddish for those who will celebrate no more. The Bar Mitzva boy’s speech was transformed from the usual blend of optimism and naivety to the burning reality we faced. We celebrated, and we wept.

On Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning, students from Leo Baeck Education Center packed hundreds of food parcels for the firemen and for the families of school students from Usafiya, Daliyat al-Carmel, the Carmel Coast region, and the Dania neighborhood of Haifa. The showers at the community center were opened up to the security forces, offering a brief chance for them to relax and clean themselves. At such times, our lives are guided by the needs of families who have experienced and are still experiencing loss.”

ARZA is collecting donations towards helping the communities in the North rebuild.  You can donate online toward Keren B’Kavod and the fire relief programs in the North.

Ma’achil R’eivim - It is a Mitzvah to Feed the Hungry

As we move into the dark of December, illuminated by the Chanukah lights, many are busy with holiday plans, galas, and all the festivities that go along with them.  We often worry this time of year about increasing waistlines, indigestion, and the diet and exercise program we will reluctantly start on January 1st.  Yet, while so many are celebrating, while we enjoy the parties and the delicacies, the 2010 Hunger in America Study by Feeding America shows that the demand for food assistance by Hoosier families is increasing. 

In a recent interview, Katy Bunder, the Executive Director of Food Finders, reported that: “The demand this past year has been nearly overwhelming. We hear more and more that people in our service area are suffering. Kids are going to bed hungry, families have no money for food after paying utilities and rent and seniors are having to choose to buy medication or to eat. We just believe there is more we can do.”

“Local statistics indicate that Food Finders serves an estimated 10,000 different clients per week in programs throughout the mid north Indiana service area.  The survey samples also indicate that 33.9 % of all households seeking food assistance have at least one adult working.  27% of all adults had lost their jobs in the previous 11 months. Women comprise 64.3% of all clients at program sites and 43.1% of the households served have children younger than 18 years of age.  In addition, results also show that 99% of clients have a place to prepare meals and more than half live in traditional households.  99% of clients at emergency food programs are US citizens and 73% of emergency food clients in Food Finders service areregistered voters. More than 50% of clients reported having very low food security which indicates one or more members either skip meals or experience increased hunger due to a lack of adequate resources for food.”

There are many organizations that help to fight hunger, and I encourage you to continue to support organizations that you have donated to in the past.  Locally we have several food drives each year to support Food Finders.  You can make donations of either foodstuffs or monetary donations: Food Finders Food Bank, Inc., 50 Olympia Ct., Lafayette, In 47909-5182 or donate online.

Nationally, MAZON: A Jewish Response to Hunger is a national nonprofit organization that allocates donations from the Jewish community to prevent and alleviate hunger among people of all faiths and backgrounds.

Each year, MAZON ( Hebrew for “sustenance”) grants over $4 million to more than 300 carefully screened hunger-relief agencies, including emergency food providers, food banks, multi-service organizations and advocacy groups that seek long-term solutions to the hunger problem. Many Jews now honor the Jewish tradition of not eating until you have provided for the poor by donating at least 3% of the cost of their life-cycle celebrations – weddings, bar mitzvahs, anniversaries, etc. Donate at: MAZON: A Jewish Response to Hunger, PO Box 894765  Los Angeles, CA 90189-4765 or online.

Our tradition teaches that we are to say a blessing (HaMotzi) before we eat a meal, and then to say a blessing (Birkat HaMazon) after we have eaten.  Our sages asked, why is it necessary to recite a blessing after the meal when we have already thanked God for our food before the meal?  We are taught that when we are hungry it is easy to be thankful for food.  It is when we have been satisfied that is easy to take sustenance for granted and when we have finished eating that it is even more difficult to remember to be grateful.  May we learn that sustenance is not something to be taken for granted, and may we help in being God’s partner by seeing to it that those in need know the feeling of a full stomach, rather than the pangs of hunger. 

Giving Thanks - Hoda'ah

Baruch atah Adonai, ha-tov shimcha ul’cha na-eh l’hodot. 

Blessed are you Eternal One, Your name is Goodness and You are worthy of thanksgiving. 

These words form the chatimah, or seal, at the end of the Hoda’ah prayer, the second closing benediction of the Amidah (Modim Anachnu Lach). It is natural for us to go about our daily lives scarcely noticing the many blessings that we have each and every day. The words of the Hoda’ah remind us that we are surrounded by miracles and blessings – our lives, our health, our families and friends, our work in this world.  The words of this prayer remind us to pause and notice them, to take a moment and lift our eyes up to see the beauty that is in this world, to feel the sun on our face, the wind in our hair, to see the beauty of autumn’s splendid palette of colors as the leaves float down to the ground.

When we pray and sing these words and give thanks for the miracles that we experience each and every day, we realize that we cannot take them for granted. Life is too precious, and these gifts are too important to notice them only when they are gone – when we have been sick, or have suffered pain and loss.  Our daily recitation of the words of the Hoda’ah can lead us to a practice of being aware and appreciative of the miracles that surround us each day, and to also make it a practice of expressing our gratitude to God and to our loved ones. 

At this season of thanksgiving, we are thankful for the daily miracles that surround us each day.  As our awareness of them grows, may we be changed, lifted up, and transformed.

Engaging Israel

On Kol Nidre this year I spoke about the need to engage with Israel, to connect and be a part of our homeland:



Within all of the mixed up and challenging parts of Jewish life here in Israel, it is our place and if we do not stand up for pluralism and equal rights and claim Israel as ours too, we do so at our peril. Israel at 62 has its successes and its faults, its failures. On this holy day of Yom Kippur we recognize that we too have faults and failures, and that we too are still growing, striving, a work in progress. Today Israel needs our help to develop a new way of thinking based on Jewish values, taking the moral and ethical language of Judaism seriously in building this Jewish and democratic state. What Israel needs now is an ideology that addresses the state’s identity as a democratic society that is upheld by moral and ethical values of Judaism, that looks to our teachings to answer the dilemmas of power, sovereignty, social justice and human rights. Israel needs to be reminded of the idealism of the Zionist pioneers and that the ideals and dreams of the past can be developed into both new idealism and realism of the future. 



How can we do this?  Get beyond the headlines, go to Israel and touch your roots, walk in the footsteps of our history, see what our people has built.



I can’t tell you how many American liberal Jews I talk to who have been on many trips to Europe, and to Asia, but have not been to Israel.  And, well, when I  say that I’ve never really traveled Europe - I was in England once when I was in my late teens, but that I’ve been to Israel now 5 times, and hope to go many more times in the future, they look at me with confusion as to why I would go there more than once.  



The Birthright trips have been a phenomenal success.  Taglit Birthright Israel has in 10 years brought 250,000 young college-aged Jews to Israel.  And of those quarter of a million kids who have experienced Israel on these trips, 17,000 of them now live in Israel (that’s 1 for every busload).  If you are between 18 and 26, Sign up for a Kesher trip to Israel with Reform Judaism. Sign up now!

I would love to lead a group trip from on our congregation and if there are enough people interested, we can make that happen. Go on birthright, go to study, go on volunteers for Israel, go on a vacation.  

But don’t just go as a tourist.

 As my colleague Rabbi Ed Feinstein says,  “You can go to France or Italy or even Hawaii as a tourist. See the sites, enjoy the museums, eat in the cafes, shop in the markets. You'll have a wonderful time. But it's not yours. It's a lovely place to visit. But it doesn't belong to you. Israel is yours. The museums in Israel tell your story. The sites are filled with your memories. The cafes are filled with your people. Israel is yours. Go to Israel, and join the argument. Because the argument isn't just Israel's. The argument belongs to us as well.” 



Learn more about Israel’s history.  Too many American Jews do not know enough about the events leading up to the Jewish state or the history of present political and social conflicts in the Middle East.  We are unaware of basic elements that are part of our history, and we are not aware of the amazing Jewish cultural and intellectual flourishing that is a result of the state of Israel’s founding. Read, discuss, debate. Read some more. 



Support pluralism and diversity in Israel.  In response to the recent arrest of Anat Hoffman for holding a Torah scroll, WOW has created a campaign to gather 10,000 photos of women holding Torah scrolls, which are being sent to leaders in Israel. Go through your photo albums from your bat mitzvah celebrations, and do the same. Come carry a Torah on Simchat Torah and upload your photo to the Women of the Wall weblink.

Send your monetary support to the Israel Religious Action Center, to Women of the Wall, to ARZA, to Reform congregations in Israel. Support The Israel Movement for Progressive Judaism, connect to liberal congregations in Israel through the World Union for Progressive Judaism and Kehillot B’Yachad. Subscribe to the Israel Religious Action Center, the Interreligious Coordinating Council of Israel and Women of the Wall newsletters.  



Learn more about Israeli politics and Israeli culture. Read Haaretz and the Jerusalem Post online. Follow advocacy issues of religious freedom and equality in Israel through Hiddush. Rent an Israeli movie - most are subtitled.  Read Israeli writers and novelists. Your Hebrew’s not so good? Don’t worry, many of them are translated into English. Listen to Israeli music and news on internet radio.  



Find a way to connect to Israel, to engage with Israel this year.  The words “klal Yisrael” are not just about the state of Israel but all Jews. We are all connected. We cannot ever forget that or let go of the challenge that Israel is a place for all Jews - it is ours to claim, and ours to dream.  Im Tirtzu ayn zo agada - If you will it, it is no dream.




L’shalom,



Rabbi Audrey S. Pollack



September 2010 bulletin article

On the morning that the month of Elul began this year, I stood at the Kotel, the Western Wall in Jerusalem to welcome the new month with the sound of the shofar. I stood with a large group of women, gathered to pray and give thanks to God, and to reflect on the month that was beginning, as we began to prepare for the journey to the new year about to begin in just four short weeks.

That same afternoon, I returned to the Kotel, and witnessed the swearing in ceremonies for new IDF soldiers. Friends and families gathered at the Kotel plaza, watching with a mix of pride and anxiety, knowing full well the dangers that might lie ahead for these young men and women, who must serve in order to protect and defend our Jewish homeland.

And later, I went into the tunnels that have been excavated underneath the Kotel, and pressed my hand onto the stones closest to the Holy of Holies, the same stones that have witnessed history for thousands of years.

In the Yiddish play The Dybbuk, the author Shalom Ansky, conveys a sense of what it must have been like to be among those at the Temple in ancient times:

“God's world is great and holy. The holiest land in the world is the land of Israel. In the land of Israel the holiest city is Jerusalem. In Jerusalem the holiest place was the Temple, and in the Temple the holiest spot was the Holy of Holies.... There are seventy peoples in the world. The holiest among these is the people of Israel. The holiest of the people of Israel is the tribe of Levi. In the tribe of Levi the holiest are the priests. Among the priests, the holiest was the High Priest.... There are 354 days in the [lunar] year. Among these, the holidays are holy. Higher than these is the holiness of the Sabbath. Among Sabbaths, the holiest is the Day of Atonement, the Sabbath of Sabbaths.... There are seventy languages in the world. The holiest is Hebrew. Holier than all else in this language is the holy Torah, and in the Torah the holiest part is the Ten Commandments. In the Ten Commandments the holiest of all words is the name of God.... And once during the year, at a certain hour, these four supreme sanctities of the world were joined with one another. That was on the Day of Atonement, when the High Priest would enter the Holy of Holies and there utter the name of God. And because this hour was beyond measure holy and awesome, it was the time of utmost peril not only for the High Priest but for the whole of Israel. For if in this hour there had, God forbid, entered the mind of the High Priest a false or sinful thought, the entire world would have been destroyed. Every spot where a man raises his eyes to heaven is a holy of holies. Every man, having been created by God in His own image and likeness, is a high priest. Every day of a man's life is a Day of Atonement, and every word that a man speaks with sincerity is the Name of the Lord. Therefore it is that every sin and every wrong that a man commits brings the destruction of the world.”

As we move through the month of Elul and prepare for the Yamim Noraim, we each prepare to enter into our own holy of holies. We consider all that has happened in the past year and all that we hope and pray for in the year to come. With prayer and song and reflection we enter into a sacred and holy space, a place which transcends time and space and sets us back on the path of remembering, where we have been, who we are, who we are meant to be. On the High Holidays we leave behind our ordinary lives and enter into the holy of holies, and hear again the ancient call of the shofar, summoning us to return - to God, to our true selves, to the path of teshuvah and tikkun olam.

May this year 5771 be for all of us a year of blessing, health, joy, and return,

Rabbi Audrey S. Pollack