You rekindled their love of traditions

Learning to “make” Shabbat through Hillel
Benjie Kaplan, the Executive Director of Hillel at the University of Minnesota, explains that there are between 80-100 students who attend Shabbat on campus each Friday.

On the third Friday of every month, a few of the students volunteer to host Shabbat for these 80 students in their dorms or apartments. Hillel gives them songbooks, candles, and challah, and students get reimbursed for their grocery receipts.

Young adults know how to attend Shabbat, but they generally don’t know how to make Shabbat. Hillel is giving our kids a venue to figure out how to create their own Jewish homes.

There’s something so beautiful about going off to college and unexpectedly finding Shabbat is part of one’s education, too. You make that happen.

 

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DAY // WAY 87: SHABBAT THOUGHTS WITH RABBI ZIMMERMAN

100 Days – Naso

by Rabbi Marcia Zimmerman, Temple Israel

 

Rabbi Marcia Zimmerman

Rabbi Marcia Zimmerman

This week’s Torah portion creates a perplexing reading of the text through the use of grammatical ambiguity.

The text reads:

And every portion from any of the holies that the children of Israel bring to the Kohen shall be his.  A man’s holies shall be his, and what a man gives to the Kohen shall be his.  (Numbers 5: 9-10)

What does the Torah mean that a man’s holies shall be his?  Does it mean the holies are given to the individual or to the Kohen?  Using nouns and pronouns in a cryptic fashion confuses the meaning of the text – or does it?  I believe there is a profound lesson held deep inside what might at first glance seem like a problem of grammatical clarity.

The idea that the possession of a person’s holies belongs either to himself or the Kohen teaches us that when things are holy, they are given to more than one person simultaneously.  When our acts are holy – when our lives are holy – we give as much as we receive.shabbat day_zimmerman

For example, the gift of Tzedakah is a gift that is given from one’s treasures and resources.  People who only see giving as the depletion of their resources rarely are generous and often do not receive the ultimate satisfaction that giving can award.

100 days-01There is social research that has monitored the health of giving.  According to a survey and study by researchers Dunn, Akin, Akin and Norton, giving actually makes one happier.  They randomly assigned people into different groups, giving one group instructions to spend $5 on themselves and one group to spend $5 on others.  Those who gave away the money reported being much happier.  Those who spent money on themselves showed no change in happiness.

The bottom line is that giving gives you pleasure and can make you happy.  The Torah is teaching us this very same message.  If giving to the Kohen makes one feel blessed and happier, then giving to the Kohen comes right back to you – so it’s both the individual and the Kohen who are simultaneously rewarded.

In these last 100 days of the community Federation campaign, we are taught in the Torah the age-old lesson that giving does not diminish us but rather shores us up, that what we give to others is also a gift we receive.  This is confirmed by modern social science.  As Ecclesiastes says, “There is nothing new under the sun,” so from this moment forward let us all turn first to Jewish texts to find the answers for the 21st century.

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Be sure to check out the rest of our 100 Days events and posts on Twitter as well as on our website. Like posts like this? Why not give us a “chai” five?

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DAY // WAY 52: SHABBAT THOUGHTS WITH RABBI DAVIS

Harvesting Patience (Parashat Kedoshim)

by Rabbi Alexander Davis, Beth El Synagogue

 

I don’t have a green thumb. Even with all the rain we’ve had these past weeks, I can’t get my grass to grow. I put down new soil, spread the seeds and… nothing. I am thinking of planting Astroturf.

Rabbi Alexander Davis

Rabbi Alexander Davis

Our ancestors would not have had the same problem. They knew about sewing and reaping, planting and harvesting. And while I may have failed in farming, perhaps I can nevertheless glean from them a lesson.

We read in this week’s Torah reading about harvesting fruit trees: “when you come into the Land and plant fruit trees, their fruit shall be forbidden for three years. In the fourth year, it shall be set aside for rejoicing before God. And in the fifth year, you may use its fruit” (Lev. 19:23-25).

This is known as the mitzvah of orlah.  According to biblical law, this mitzvah applied only to farmers in Israel. But the oral law extended its application to outside of the Land.

Essentially, farmers did not use the yield of fruit trees for the first three years. In the fourth year, they brought the fruits to the Temple and donated them to the priests of the Temple. Only in the fifth year could a farmer taste the fruit of his/her labor.

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Commentators differ on the reason behind this mitzvah. Some claim that the fruit of the first three seasons was not healthy to eat or worthy of being brought before God (that is, it was not sweet enough). Ramban writes: “the fruit of the first three years is not fit to offer to God, for in those years the crop is small and tasteless; most of the trees will not even bring forth fruit at all until the fourth year. So we wait and taste none of it until we have brought all of the first good fruits as a sacred offering before the Lord.”

I don’t know if agronomists would agree with this analysis. But I see in this passage a lesson in patience. It takes a long time to enjoy the fruit of our labors.

100 days-01Serving on the board of the Minneapolis Jewish Federation and as a co-Chair of Yachad, the new platform for Jewish education of Minneapolis teens, I see this lesson first hand. We must plan and propose, prune and pick. For example, in a start-up like Yachad, we understood that success would not happen overnight. It took years to cultivate relationships and nurture the program. But with patience, purpose and planning, the talented staff and lay leaders are planting the seeds of future growth for our Jewish community.

In this week when we celebrate the fruits of modern day Israel, in this season when we anticipate the arrival of fruits in the farmer’s market, we recall the efforts of our ancestors to bring forth an abundant crop of sweet fruit and in the process, harvest a lesson about the value of patience.

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Be sure to check out the rest of our 100 Days events and posts on Twitter as well as on our website. Like posts like this? Why not give us a “chai” five?

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DAY // WAY 38: SHABBAT THOUGHTS WITH RABBI RAPPAPORT

Memory and Tzedakkah

by Rabbi Debra Rappaport, Shir Tikvah Congregation

Rabbi Rappaport

Rabbi Rappaport

Until Rabbinical School, I believed that the Yizkor Service occurred once a year, on Yom Kippur. The afternoon when we’re fasting and deeply aware of our own frailty and mortality, we collectively remember our loved ones who have departed this life. While in fact the Yom Kippur Yizkor service was the original one (and the only one currently observed by many), our ancestors added three other times during the year for memorializing all of our close relatives who have died as well as Jewish martyrs. During the three Pilgrimage Festivals (hagim) of Sukkot, Shavuot, and Passover, our Israelite ancestors would make the pilgrimage to Jerusalem with their offerings. On the last day of each of these hagim, a Yizkor service provided – and still provides – a chance to remember all who have died.

Why do we do this collective ritual? Each one of our deceased loved ones is remembered individually on his or her Yarzheit, the anniversary of their death. Why then do we remember them collectively as well? The Hebrew root of Yizkor is zakhor, which means “remember”. Judaism is filled with calls to remember, especially at Passover, when we teach the story of our becoming a people, beckoning the next generations to join in our collective identity.

 

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Rabbi Ron Wolfson explains, “Originally, Yizkor was recited only on Yom Kippur. Its primary purpose was to remember the deceased by committing tzedakah [charity] funds on the theory that the good deeds of the survivors elevate the souls of the departed. It also enhanced the chances for personal atonement by doing a deed of lovingkindness. Since the Torah reading on the last day of the pilgrimage festivals [the holidays of Sukkot, Passover, and Shavuot, when the ancient Israelites made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem] mentions the importance of donations, Yizkor was added to these holiday services.” (source: http://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/yizkor-the-memorial-service/)

100 days-01The Yizkor prayer reads, “May G‑d remember the soul of my [father/mother/loved-one], my teacher [insert Hebrew name] who has gone to his/her supernal world, because I will — bli neder without obligating myself with a vow — donate charity for his/her sake. In this merit, may his/her soul be bound up in the bond of life with the souls of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel and Leah, and with the other righteous men and women who are in Gan Eden; and let us say, Amen.

This year, Yizkor Pesach is today (Friday, April 29th) for Reform Jews and those in Israel, and tomorrow (Saturday, April 30th) for Conservative and Orthodox Jews in Diaspora.

Who will you be remembering?

Will you consider a gift the Minneapolis Jewish Federation in their memory?

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Be sure to check out the rest of our 100 Days events and posts on Twitter as well as on our website. Like posts like this? Why not give us a “chai” five?

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DAY // WAY 31: Thoughts on Shabbat with Rabbi Stiefel

What questions will you ask this year?

by Rabbi Sharon Stiefel, Mayim Rabim Congregation Sharon S - AS cropped

One of my favorite Haggadah commentaries I found in recent years is this:

Isidor I. Rabi, the Nobel laureate in physics was once asked, “Why did you become a scientist, rather than a doctor or lawyer or businessman, like the other immigrant kids in your neighborhood?”

“My mother made me a scientist without ever intending it. Every other Jewish mother in Brooklyn would ask her child after school: ‘Nu, Did you learn anything today?’ But not my mother. She always would ask me a different question. ‘Izzy,’ she would say, ‘Did you ask a good question today?’ That difference—asking good questions—made me become a scientist.” (Donald Sheff, New York Times, Jan. 19, 1988)

SM day 31 no title

Pesach is built around questions.

Not only are there the Four Questions, the actions we do at the Seder and the items we put on the table are to inspire questions. It is a way to open our eyes to ask, “Why are we behaving so differently tonight?”

Last year, just prior to Pesach, I distributed a stack of cards with questions on them to use at the Seder.  (If you go on line you can purchase a “Passover Box of Questions” advertised to jump start conversation at your Seder.) There are numerous other ways to elicit questions at a Seder. Everyone attending a Seder can be asked to arrive with a question about Pesach or the Exodus. Or rewards can be given at the Seder to encourage questions. A former teacher of mine distributes Passover candy to every person who asks a question at his Seder. 

Teachers know the importance of encouraging questions to keep students absorbed in learning. The importance of questions is the underpinning of our tradition. The Talmud itself is a form of questions and dialogue.

100 days-01Questions are at the heart of being a liberated people.

In a slave’s world, there is no room for questions. Life is arbitrary. Things are the way they are and the slave has no role in changing their existence. Free people, on the other hand, want understanding. We are not automatons; rather, our role is to personalize the story of the Exodus so it is ever more meaningful to us every year.

Often when we study text together, we implicitly embrace that the questions are more important than the answers. We hold contradictions in our tradition, find ourselves at moments of cognitive dissonance, and wrestle with troubling texts. And when we ask our questions, we engage with in conversation that builds our relationships with one another and with our heritage. We share a common bond of valuing our questions.

May this upcoming Pesach be full of questions, as well as joyous and sweet for you and those you love.  

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Be sure to check out the rest of our 100 Days events and posts on Twitter as well as on our website. Like posts like this? Why not give us a “chai” five?

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