Rabbi's Ramblings...... 

 

Shalom Congregants and Friends.....    


I look forward to our installation service this Friday evening, June 17th. We will install our new President, Syd Schulman, and new members of the Boards of Directors and Education. We will also thank outgoing officers and board members for their service to our congregation.

And we will also acknowledge ALL OF YOU WHO, WITHOUT PORTFOLIO OR TITLE, VOLUNTEER FOR COMMITTEES OR PROGRAMS AND KEEP THE SYNAGOGUE GOING. YOU DESERVE RECOGNITION AND A TOKEN OF APPRECIATION AS WELL. IT WILL BE A VERY SPECIAL SERVICE!

This Shabbat and next Shabbat we are going to enjoy hosting an aufruf at morning services. Come share in singing "siman tov u'mazal tov" and throwing sweet wishes at the wedding couple.

One of the most enjoyable things a rabbi can do is help put up a mezuzah when an individual or family moves to a new home. I did this earlier in the week for congregants and found it as enjoyable as ever!

Possibly the next "most enjoyable" thing to do is taking vacation. I'll be off next Monday through Thursday. I will be leading services next Shabbat, June 24-25. Friday evening we will be starting our exploration of Jewish Identity.

If you have had a simcha or graduation in your family, be sure to let the office or me know to include in the next Chai-lites. And if you're going on a trip, I'd like to give you shaliach kesef to wish you a safe journey!

Note the dates  for Shabbat Under the Stars, coming up over the summer. Morning and evening minyan continue on a daily basis!

Shabbat Shalom ....... Rabbi Gary and Iris Atkins

 
"All it takes to study Torah is an open heart,

a curious mind and a desire to grow a Jewish soul."  


 Shabbat  Services & Candle Lighting Times

CANDLE LIGHTING     
Friday, June 17,  8:08pm  DST  
Friday, June 24,  8:09pm  DST    

SHABBAT SERVICE TIMES    

Friday, June 17-- 8:00pm  Saturday, June 18, 9:30am, 

8:00pm Mincha/ Maariv/ Havdalah    

 

Joke of the Week 

 

Patient: Doctor, I have this terrible problem. I think I'm a dog. I walk around on all fours. I keep barking in the middle of the night, and I eat dog food.
  
Psychiatrist: Very interesting. Lie down on the couch.
  
Patient: I'm not allowed on the couch.
Social Action Updates    
 
There are congregants who need a ride to Friday evening services... if you want to help someone attend our worship... as well as doing a mitzvah, call Rabbi Atkins.


DONATIONS OF FOOD ARE GREATLY NEEDED FOR THE KOSHER AND REGULAR FOOD BANKS!! PLEASE DONATE AT THE SYNAGOGUE NOW!!     
 

 

It opened April 2 - Bloomfield Soup Kitchen.... Hosted at Bloomfield United Methodist Church


Be aware of those less fortunate than we are!! Carry out the mitzvah of tikkun olam!
 Upcoming Synagogue & (Selected) Community Events   
JUNE 17 - INSTALLATION OF OFFICERS AND VOLUNTEER RECOGNITION SHABBAT
 
JUNE 25 - HAV-DELI at HAVDALAH. RSVP to the office!
 
JUNE 19-26 BUILDING ABRAHAMIC PARTNERSHIPS -
A UNIQUE WEEK OF LEARNING TAUGHT BY HARTFORD SEMINARY PROFESSORS, PROGRAM LED BY DR. YEHEZKEL LANDAU. Call the Seminary if interested!


United Synagogue News.....

 

In Restructuring, United Synagogue Slashes Dues, Jobs

From The Jewish Week .....Tuesday, June 14, 2011
  

The Conservative movement's congregational arm will reduce dues that member synagogues pay to the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, cut 15 staff jobs and restructure many of its other leadership positions as part of a Strategic Plan announced this week.

 

The implementation of the year-long self-study of the denomination, which has suffered a major loss in members and congregations in recent decades, is "intended to create the framework for a new United Synagogue and to build a more vibrant Conservative movement," Rabbi Steve Wernick, executive vice president, and Richard Skolnik, international president, said in a prepared statement.

 

Jerry Herman, a veteran of the nonprofit leadership field, becomes the organization's first chief operating officer.

 

The Strategic Plan, developed by USCJ board members and pulpit rabbis, also includes, in addition to a 5 percent reduction in synagogue dues and the elimination of the movement's current regional structure, a training program for 5,000 lay leaders in the United States and Canada.

Among new executive positions announced by USCJ are Kathy Elias, chief kehilla officer, Richard Moline, chief outreach officer; Barry Mael, chief resource development and marketing officer; Ray Goldstein, kehilla relationship team leader; and Rabbi Paul Drazen, director of special projects.

Rabbi Wernick and Skolnik announced that USCJ has received commitments for $800,000 over the next three years.

Israel News

 

Even those who aren't particularly sympathetic to Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu, could get a good measure of satisfaction from this interview with British Television during the retaliation against Hamas' shelling of Israel.   
 

The interviewer asked him: "How come so many more Palestinians have been killed in this conflict than Israelis?" (A nasty question if there ever was one!)

 

Netanyahu: "Are you sure that you want to start asking in that direction?" 

 

Interviewer: (Falling into the trap) Why not?

 

Netanyahu: "Because in World War II more Germans were killed than British and Americans combined, but there is no doubt in anyone's mind that the war was caused by Germany's aggression. And in response to the German blitz on London, the British wiped out the entire city of Dresden, burning to death more German civilians than the number of people killed in Hiroshima. Moreover, I could remind you that in 1944, when the R.A.F. tried to bomb the Gestapo Headquarters in Copenhagen, some of the bombs missed their target and fell on a Danish children's hospital, killing 83 little children. Perhaps you have another question?" 

"Crash Course on the Arab-Israeli Conflict."

 

Here are overlooked facts in the current & past Middle East situation.


 
BRIEF FACTS ON THE ISRAELI CONFLICT TODAY... WORTH REPEATING

(It takes just 1.5 minutes to read!)

It makes sense and it's not slanted. Jew and non-Jew -- it doesn't matter.
 

1. Nationhood and Jerusalem: Israel became a nation in 1312 BC, two thousand (2000) years before the rise of Islam.
2. Arab refugees in Israel began identifying themselves as part of a Palestinian people in 1967, 
two decades after the establishment of the modern State of Israel.
3. Since the Jewish conquest in 1272 BC, the Jews have had dominion over the land for one thousand (1000) years with a continuous presence in the land for the past 3,300 years.
4. The only Arab dominion since the conquest in 635 lasted no more than 22 years. 
5. For over 3,300 years, Jerusalem has been the Jewish capital. 
Jerusalem has never been the capital of any Arab or Muslim entity. Even when the Jordanians occupied Jerusalem, they never sought to make it their capital, and Arab leaders 
did not come to visit.
6. Jerusalem is mentioned over 700 times in Tanach, the Jewish Holy Scriptures.
Jerusalem is not mentioned once in the Koran.
7. King David founded the city of Jerusalem. 
Mohammed never came to Jerusalem. 
 
8. Jews pray facing Jerusalem. Muslims pray with their backs toward Jerusalem. 
9. Arab and Jewish Refugees: in 1948 the Arab refugees were encouraged to leave Israel 
by Arab leaders promising to purge the land of Jews. Sixty-eight percent left (many in fear of retaliation by their own brethren, the Arabs), without ever seeing an Israeli soldier. The ones who stayed were afforded the same peace, civility, and citizenship rights as everyone else.
 
 10. The Jewish refugees were forced to flee from Arab lands due to Arab brutality, persecution and pogroms. 
11. The number of Arab refugees who left Israel in 1948 is estimated to be around 630,000. The number of Jewish refugees from Arab lands is estimated to be the same. 
12. Arab refugees were INTENTIONALLY not absorbed or integrated into the Arab lands to which they fled, despite the vast Arab territory. Out of the 100,000,000 refugees since World War II, theirs is the 
only refugee group in the world that hasnever been absorbed or integrated into their own people's lands. Jewish refugees were completely absorbed into Israel, a country no larger than the state of New Jersey.
13. The Arab-Israeli Conflict: the Arabs are represented by
 eight separate nations, not including the Palestinians. There is only one Jewish nation. The Arab nations initiated all five wars and lost. Israel defended itself each time and won.
14. The PLO's Charter still 
calls for the destruction of the State of Israel. Israel has given the Palestinians most of the West Bank land, autonomy under the Palestinian Authority, and has supplied them.
 
15. Under Jordanian rule, Jewish holy sites were desecrated and the Jews were denied access to places of worship. Under Israeli rule, all Muslim and Christian sites have been preserved and made accessible to people of all faiths. 
16. The UN Record on Israel and the Arabs: of the 175 Security Council resolutions passed before 1990, 97 were directed 
against Israel. 
17. Of the 690 General Assembly resolutions voted on before 1990, 429 were directed
against Israel.
18. The UN was silent while 58 Jerusalem synagogues were destroyed by the Jordanians. 
19. The UN was silent while the Jordanians systematically desecrated the ancient Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives.
20. The UN was silent while the Jordanians enforced an apartheid-like policy of preventing Jews from visiting the Temple Mount and the Western Wall. 

 

SOMETHING TO BE CONCERNED ABOUT.....

Fears Rise Over San Francisco Circumcision Bill

Ballot measure could spread to other cities, spur anti-Semitism, experts say.

  
From The Jewish Week, Steve Lipman  Staff Writer, June 7, 2011
  

Rabbi Gil Leeds, who runs the Chabad Jewish Student Center at the University of California at Berkeley and has served as a mohel for six years, says he and fellow performers of circumcisions in the San Francisco area talk about doing a bris on the steps of City Hall next November.

If, that is, a referendum banning circumcisions in the city passes on Election Day.

The rabbi is kidding, but the ballot measure that would make the performance of circumcisions on males under 18 - with a possible $1,000 fine and one-year prison term - illegal has become a matter of serious concern in many parts of the Jewish community.

While most observers say the proposition will probably be defeated at the polls, and if passed will probably be overturned in an appeals court on constitutional grounds, representatives of Jewish organizations say they fear the San Francisco ballot measure may foment anti-Semitism, weaken support for Jewish tradition and encourage opponents of circumcision to introduce such public referendums in other U.S. cities.

"I think people are concerned," said Marc Stern, associate general counsel of the American Jewish Committee. "There is no question" that a successful anti-circumcision ballot measure in California will be duplicated elsewhere. "You will have a lot of other imitators."

MGM Bill, a San Diego-based advocacy group that has prepared anti-circumcision legislation for 46 states and last year switched tactics to ballot proposals, has reportedly targeted no other cities. MGM stands for male genital mutation, the term that anti-circumcision "intactivists" use to describe the traditional rite practiced by Jews and Muslims.

The AJCommittee has served as a consultant on this issue for San Francisco's Jewish Community Relations Council, which is coordinating local opposition to the measure, Stern said. The ballot measure probably "will be beaten - beaten badly by the public," he said.

The ballot proposal also may violate federal and state freedom-of -religion guarantees, and may illegally give San Francisco authority over health matters that fall under state jurisdiction, Stern said. "It's likely to be overturned [on appeal], but it's far from a certainty."

"This proposition would let the majority decide religious practice for a religious group," Joel Paul, professor of constitutional law at the University of California Hastings School of Law told JTA. "It's not part of our politics. No one should have to go into an election and be asked to defend their religion."....

The debate over the anti-circumcision measure is taking place at the same time that challenges to religious practice, such as the right to perform ritual slaughter of animals, or to wear religiously mandated head coverings, are being raised in several European countries.

The San Francisco referendum can give moral support to the anti-religion efforts abroad, said Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League. "It will encourage similar efforts beyond the United States."

Is the ballot proposal anti-Semitic?

Not necessarily, but it provides fodder for anti-Semites, Foxman said.

"Not all opponents to circumcision are anti-Semitic, but most anti-Semites oppose circumcision," a staple of Jewish tradition, he said.

A prepared statement last week by the ADL condemned the "grotesque anti-Semitic imagery and themes" in "Foreskin Man," a comic book created by Matthew Hess, president of the MGM Bill organization. "Monster Mohel," one of two titles in the comic book series, features "identifiably Orthodox Jewish characters as evil villains, [who are] 'disrespectful and deeply offensive,'" the ADL stated.

"This is an advocacy campaign taken to a new low," according to the ADL statement. "No matter what one's personal opinions of male circumcision, it is irresponsible to use stereotypical caricatures of religious Jews to promote the anti-circumcision agenda."

Ironically, the campaign against circumcision (brit milah in Hebrew) has had a positive effect in parts of the Jewish community, spurring interfaith coalitions with Muslims, who also circumcise their sons, and increased interest in the mitzvah that was first done by the Patriarch Abraham on himself and his household.

"This issue has presented us with the opportunity to educate more people about this tradition and about Jewish life," said Rabbi Yosef Langer, director of Chabad in San Francisco......

The Orthodox Union called the ballot measure "an affront to all people of good will," and Phillip Sherman, an Upper West Side cantor and veteran mohel, called the proposal "anti-religious, anti-Semitic and racist. As an American and as an observant Jew, I am deeply concerned."

An editorial in the current issue of The International Jerusalem Post ("No to a 'brit mila' ban") cited both evidence of circumcisions' medical value, and the historical record of opposition to circumcision. "Opposition to brit mila dates back to ancient times," The Post wrote. "The Romans were particularly hostile to the practice before and after the destruction of the Second Temple. Defacing the male sexual organ was seen by the pagan Romans as an attack on the Hellenistic adoration of nature, considered perfect and a reflection of the will of the gods."

"In history, we've done [circumcisions] under more adverse circumstances" than the hostility brought by the San Francisco referendum, said Rabbi Leeds, from Berkeley. His allusion is to the risks faced by Jews who performed a brit milah under the ancient Romans, the communists in Russia and the Nazis.

"I'm confident that this [ballot proposal] won't get very far," he said.

The rabbi, who performs up to 10 circumcisions a month in San Francisco, said he and fellow mohelim have agreed that they will continue to practice their profession if voters approve the anti-circumcision measure.

"Of course, we're not going to stop," he said - not on the steps of City Hall, a symbolic venue, but openly, as usual, in synagogues and family homes.

What about the $1,000 fine and year in prison?

"I'm willing to take the risk," Rabbi Leeds said.

Weekly Torah Portion Commentary  -   

Courtesy of Rabbi Michael Gold   

 

    Twelve spies enter the land of Canaan on behalf of the people Israel.  For forty days they traverse the entire land, preparing a report on the inhabitants and the produce of the land.  They all see the same thing.  And yet their reports are totally different.  Ten of the spies see the land as toxic, "a land that swallows its inhabitants."  It would be better to turn around and head back to Egypt.  Only two of the spies see the land as "exceedingly good," "a land flowing with milk and honey."
       How can twelve people look at the same events and see everything so differently?  Our attitude effects how we behold the world.  We all know people who tend to see the cup as half empty and other people who see it as half full.  We all know people who dwell on the negative and others who dwell on the positive.  Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder.  But so is evil and good, despair and hope, negative and positive.  We can view events with a predisposition towards failure or an assumption of success.
       In my position I meet many Holocaust survivors.  They have been through the worst horrors human beings can afflict on other human beings.  And their attitudes towards the world truly vary.  Some survivors refuse to set foot in a synagogue, pray to God, or acknowledge any kind of spiritual reality.  To these people the world is an ugly, hopeless place devoid of God.  Other survivors have made deep commitments to religion, attend services regularly, and have a deep belief in God.  Ask them why, they may quote the philosopher Emil Fackenheim, "Don't give Hitler any posthumous victories."
       How can two people look at the same event and see it through such different eyes?  Some materialists will speak about the God gene.  There are individuals who genetically are pre-disposed to see the hand of God in events.  They look at a crisis and see it as a test from God.  They sense God's presence in the most difficult moments.  They are genetically programmed to have faith and optimism.  Others lack the God gene.  They see a material world that offers few signs of hope.  They are pre-disposed towards Murphy's famous law - if something can go wrong, it will.  From this point of view, how we see this world is genetic.  Or to paraphrase Shakespeare, "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in our genes."
       This point of view that despair and hope are in our genes is popular in our contemporary culture.  But it is deeply troubling.  It takes away our free will and our ability to choose.  Our minds and hearts are free to react towards events and crises.  Perhaps this idea was best put by another holocaust survivor, the psychotherapist Viktor Frankl.  Frankl he survived Auschwitz, wrote a powerful book called Man's Quest for Meaning.  In the book he beautifully writes, "Everything can be taken from a man or woman but one thing: the last of human freedoms, to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances."  We often have no choice about what happens to us.  But we can decide how we wish to react.
       There are numerous stories in the Talmud and Rabbinic literature about the saying gam zu l'tova - "this is also for the good."  One such story involves Rabbi Akiba who was traveling with a donkey, a rooster, and a candle.  He looked for lodging in the town, but was forced to sleep in the woods.  But his attitude was, "this is also for the good."  Soon a wind blew out his candle.  A cat ate his rooster and a lion ate his donkey.  But he would not give up his optimism.  The next day he heard that a regiment captured the entire town.  Akiba realized that if he had slept in the town, if he had his candle, his rooster, or his donkey, he too would have been captured.  He realized the good in tragic events.  (Berachot 60b)
       In our portion ten spies looked at the land and saw everything as hopeless.  Two spies looked at the land and saw great hope.   Our tradition teaches us to see the positive in everything, to embrace every challenge as an opportunity.  Or as Frankl put it, we cannot always decide our fate, but we can decide our attitude.