I have the privilege of watching my daughter start middle school this year as Hannah has begun 5th grade remotely from our basement. As you might imagine, this is every kid’s dream! During the second week of school, I walked downstairs to see how she was doing. Normally, when I do this I get a mixture of subtle, but direct hand signals to leave the room before anyone on screen sees me. This time, she just looked at me and shrugged her shoulders. “The teacher’s internet kicked her out of class, so all of the students are just sitting on Zoom staring at each other — no one is talking. I think I should say something!”

I could not have been more proud. What we want for our children is the courage to speak up when they know something is wrong. We pray that they have a voice and that they are not afraid to use it. Figuring out your teacher’s internet problems is not quite the same as solving hunger or poverty, but I imagine you wouldn’t have known that from looking at my face.

It is the season of making choices. It is the season of speaking up and using our voice. And this year, more than most, we must know that our choices matter. Anne Frank wrote that “our lives are fashioned by our choices. First we make our choices. Then our choices make us.”

Voting in the midst of the pandemic and continued social distancing is a new experience for all of us. But we cannot forget that voting is how we raise our hand and raise our voices as citizens of the United States and particularly as citizens with particular concerns about the priorities of our community. We know that growing anti-Semitism is bad for us and bad for our country. We vote and we raise our voice to right this wrong. We know that Israel is dear to our hearts and peace often hinges on the role our government plays. And, of course, there are a number of universal issues that align with American Jewish values from immigration to civil rights to education that are on the ballot this year as well.

We cannot afford to be a classroom that is silent. We cannot afford not to make a choice. The choices we make this year will make us. I pray that our Jewish voices are heard during this election. That they are met with a resolve to extinguish anti-Semitism, racism and discrimination of any kind. Most importantly, I pray that the choices we make permit us to become the people we have wanted to be, a people full of promise.

Adapted from Creating Your Mikdash M’at (little sanctuary) by Rabbi Elyse Goldstein.

We will certainly miss being in person for our High Holy Days this year. The majesty of large crowds standing close, singing in harmony all our familiar and moving tunes. But we will be “together” safely — in our own homes and/or in small outdoor groups. This year we have a unique opportunity to create a sacred space in our home. These ten suggestions are meant to help you enhance the High Holy Day experience at home, while creating a communal atmosphere for us all.

1. Choose your prayer space carefully in advance by spending a few moments of individual contemplation/family discussion. Don’t wait until the last minute!
2. Once you have chosen your space, say a blessing or kavannah (“intention”) over it to mark it as your mikdash m’at. Suggestions of verses and blessings are on the next page.
3. What chair will you sit on? Put a cushion or festive pillow on it, or drape it with a tallit, special piece of fabric, or scarf.
4. Change where you put your computer from a work space to a contemplative space by covering the desk or table with a white tablecloth, white runner, or white placemat, and a vase of flowers. You will be receiving a special candle from Temple Israel to light as your ner tamid (“eternal light”). Make a space for it where you will see it while watching services.
5. Find meaningful objects to grace your space. Perhaps, on Rosh Hashanah include holiday objects like candlesticks and a kiddish cup, apples and honey.
   On Yom Kippur you can place cherished mementos, family heirlooms, and photos of loved ones to surround you. If you own a shofar, put it where it’s visible.
6. If possible, learn how to stream our services to a large TV screen by viewing our YouTube channel or connecting a computer to the screen.
7. Try to limit or disconnect auditory distractions. You can turn off your email and text message sounds, close your email program and any other distracting apps so you can be fully present during the service.
8. Wear clothing that makes you feel as if you are entering a spiritual space. Wearing a kippah and tallit are encouraged, even if they are not always your choice in our sanctuary. Perhaps in the absence of seeing other people wearing religious garb, this year you can see it in your home.
9. Be sure you have your machzor (holy day prayer book) with you. You can purchase copies from https://www.ccarnet.org/publications/hhd/ or view for free online. You can borrow one set per household from the Temple by requesting a set — to be returned after Yom Kippur.
10. Our holidays are never just about the time we spend in our sanctuary. They begin at sunset and continue through the following day. Where possible, make the day special. Plan your meals, a favorite walk, phone calls to family and friends and even quiet time to reflect. This year, perhaps more than any other, you can put your stamp on making the High Holy Days personally meaningful.

As someone who grew up in Atlanta, it is easy for me to claim that US Congressman John Lewis was my representative. Whether his name was on a ballot you completed or not, Representative Lewis represented much more than Georgia’s 5th Congressional District. John Lewis represented the courage of an American patriot to fight for our ideals. He represented a generation of civil rights leaders, like Dr. King, who were taken from us before they finished their work. Senator Mitch McConnell wrote, from the other side of the partisan aisle, “our great nation’s history has only bent towards justice because great men like John Lewis took it upon themselves to help bend it.”

People like John Lewis remind us that certain values call us to leave the communities where we segregate by race, religion, class or politics and gather for a shared purpose. Like a pandemic that threatens life everywhere, racism is an easily acquired disease. It rears its head in ignorant individuals and in uninformed institutions. As a Jewish community, we are neither immune from it, nor are we to sit on the sidelines while our neighbors stand up to fight it. This is our problem, it is our fight, it is a Jewish cause, and it is fraught with complexities.

In 2016, when the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement began, there were a number of statements and policies put into place by the BLM leadership that were cause for great concern among Zionists. Since that time the leadership has changed and Israel has not been a focus. But even if it were today, we cannot sit out on battles that are deeply important to our country, our neighbors and the Jewish community because of a single disagreement, even if that disagreement is over Israel.

Of course, this is nothing new. In 1939, the British who controlled Palestine, published a policy (the 1939 White Paper) aimed at limiting Jewish immigration and minimizing Zionist influence in the soon to be State of Israel. Zionists were furious at the British. At the same time in Europe, the British lead the Allies in the fight against Nazi Germany and the Holocaust. What was a Jewish person to think of the British? Were they our enemy, preventing the creation of a Jewish state or our hero, fighting the Nazi’s?

David Ben Gurion, later to be Israel’s first Prime Minister, wrote that year:

We must assist the British in the war as if there were no White Paper and we must resist the White Paper as if there were no war.
~September 1939

Today, a war of hateful anti-Semitism flanks us on one side while a battle against racism flanks us from the other. As Ben Gurion shared eighty years ago, we must fight both. We must fight racism in any way possible, including our vocal and visible support of the Black Lives Matter movement. And we must call out anti-Semitism, even when it comes from the mouths of some of those who march with us.

There are issues and times when all that divides us shrinks in relation to universal values that unite us. The fight against the pandemic has brought us to one of these times. The fight against racism, anti-Semitism and an increasing wave of hate, is the issue.

If some form of heaven exists, I would like to imagine leaders like John Lewis and David Ben Gurion sit together and look over our society as we put their lessons into practice. I pray that they can look on us in the coming year with pride as we fight battles they led, but were not around to complete.

Due to the hard work of a number of leaders in our community, this work has already begun. In the coming weeks there are a number of opportunities for the Akron Jewish community to gather to learn more about why racism is a Jewish issue and what we can do to act against it as a community. (See the online Calendar for events.)

Plans are also under way to facilitate regular discussions among an interfaith and interracial community in Akron and we look forward to sharing that information when it becomes available.

May we look toward the future with the courage of Representative John Lewis and may we face our fights with the commitment of Prime Minister David Ben Gurion as we continue to bend the arc of history toward justice for all.

Shabbat Shalom

During the online PRIDE Shabbat service on 6/5/2020 Rabbi Emeritus David Horowitz and Rabbi Brown gave sermons that focused on LGBTQIA+ issues in the Jewish community.

Before the end of the service (at 21:30 of the YouTube video), Rabbi Horowitz also presented one of his prayers that is included in MISHKAN GA’AVAH: WHERE PRIDE DWELLS edited by Rabbi Denise L. Eger published by CCAR Press.

For the first six months of our relationship, Carrie and I dated long distance. I was finishing rabbinical school in Los Angeles and she was living in Chicago. As any couple who lives apart knows, this is far from ideal. At the time, a wise friend who had recently married, after a period of being apart from her then husband, shared that there are skills you build in your relationship while you are apart that are often difficult to achieve when we are together.

She was right. Unable to see each other, we learn to cherish the moments we have together. We learn to give each other our full attention on a phone call or to make sure that we check in every day and share the details of our lives in conversation. In the same way that a book gives us more nuance than a movie of the same story, an extended conversation on the phone or a weekend together after weeks apart often becomes more valuable than a weekend we take for granted after years of being in the same home. Being physically distanced forces us to be soulfully close.

We are now months into our long distance relationships with our friends and loved ones. I want to believe that the advice our wise friend gave us applies to our lives today. I pray that we are building new skills in our relationships, focusing with more intention on the conversations that matter and making a book out of aspects of our lives that we often glossed over. I also wonder if we are learning how important it is to care for the parts of each other we ignore when we are with each other in person.

Rabbi Israel Salanter, a leading Jewish ethicist of the 19th century, is often quoted for a teaching about our vanity. He wrote that “most people are concerned about their own bodies and their neighbors’ souls. In order to improve our world we must leave our neighbors’ souls alone. We must instead worry about our neighbors’ bodies and our own souls.”

In this socially distanced world, we are discovering that we need not worry about what clothes we wear or what trends are being noticed. We are in a soul-focused world right now. A world where vanity and aesthetics have taken a back seat to the importance of being in relationship with those we love. It is not the same experience that we have when we are with each other in person.

And, like romantic relationships, long distance is rarely sustainable for a long time. But for a series of months, for Summer and perhaps Fall, while we long to be back with those we love, I hope we can take advantage of this opportunity to learn to love them better, to cherish what we know of them more than how we see them and to recognize that while this moment is far from ideal, perhaps it is a moment that can shape the future of our most cherished relationships for the better.

About a month into the stay-at-home order, our nine-year-old daughter Hannah fell off her bike. Thankfully, her only injury was a large cut on her knee. Three months ago, we would have hopped in the car and headed to Urgent Care or the Children’s Emergency room to see if she needed stitches. In our world today, we took a deep breath, put on our COVID-19 hats and (after a short phone call to our pediatrician) decided that we were going to patch this knee up ourselves. With gauze and antibiotic ointment in hand, we did our best home remedy.

The word Tikkun Olam is used a lot in modern American Judaism. Often it is used synonymously with the words Social Action or Social Justice. A footnote in our prayerbook explains that this term has evolved over the years. In the second and third centuries it referred to “rabbinic legislation to remedy specific social ills or legal injustices.” Later, in our Aleinu prayer, it is used to refer to the actions God will take to fix our world. In the sixteenth century, Jewish mystics understood tikkun olam to refer to the human actions we take to perfect our world.

My daughter’s knee has healed now. She will probably have a scar for life, but our home remedy mostly did the trick. As we all learn how to navigate life from home, I want to remind us that many of the wounds of our world do not require social justice surgeons. Most of us are not walking around with law degrees and, in our normally busy world, most of us do not have the luxury of stopping everything we are doing to become amateur experts in the complex issues of injustice today. But a lot of our justice problems do not require such a degree, much time or God’s divine intervention as was the case for the Israelites. A lot of justice work can be done with a home remedy.

We are all patients, regardless of whether we have studied medicine or not. We all have suffering in common. Scratch the skin of any human being and you come upon some degree of helplessness, misery or even agony. Being a person involves the ability to suffer himself, to suffer for others; to know passion as well as compassion.

~Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel (The Insecurity of Freedom, p. 24)

To believe in tikkun olam today is to believe that we, average human beings, have the ability to offer home remedies for the world’s wounds. Whether we say it aloud or not, we know the remedy for the racist murder of a man out for a jog. We know what senseless loss feels like, and we know that sometimes it’s just one conversation across the table that opens our eyes to understand someone for who they are and not how they look to us.

May we all know that we are patients of suffering so that we can act as surgeons of social justice. And, as our prayerbook reminds us every Shabbat: lirot m’heirah . . . l’takein olam. (May we swiftly recognize that we are the ones who have the ability to heal the wounds of our world.)

Two years ago the leadership of Temple Israel embarked on a journey to find out who we are and who we can be. The Strategic Planning committee practiced a version of the Jewish principle from Pirke Avot (5:22): Hafoch ba va-hafoch ba, d’chola ba (“Turn it and turn it again, for everything is in it”). Our leadership looked at our community and produced our new mission statement.

After hearing stories about how important Temple Israel has been in lives throughout the generations, it was clear to me that this vision statement is not new. It is who we have always been. Turn something around and look at it from different angles and you will discover what is at the core of its purpose: connecting people to each other, to God and to the needs of our world. Our strategic plan reinforced that this continues to be our congregation’s vision.

The new logo illustrates the core purpose as well. Its dominant image is the Hebrew letter shin, but this is no ordinary shin.

Rabbi Applebaum chose a shin to adorn the front of the ark on Merriman Road fifty years ago. Sheryl Aronson incorporated the shin into our previous logo, and it dominates the bima in Springside Drive.

The shin symbolizes one of the names of God, El Shaddai and is on the mezzuzot of our homes. It is also the first letter of Psalm 16 at the front of our sanctuary: “I set God before me and I shall never be shaken.”

With our new logo, I invite us to give our shin a third meaning: shalshelet. Shalshelet means “chain” as in Shalshelet Ha-Kabbalah: “the chain of Jewish tradition”. It links us to our past — our previous sacred space. It links us to the clergy who adopted it and to the people who looked at it. And, now, it links us to the people who see it on our website and letterhead.

I ask that when you see the new logo that you know all that it holds for our congregation. It is our link, our vision for making sure that no matter the circumstance — whether a simcha, a loss or a global pandemic — that we are a congregation linked together, never alone and always able to rely on those who hold onto us as a part of our community.

The second part of the logo is the flame.

A flame reminds us of the intimate side of Judaism — the candles lit on Shabbat or the candles lit when we remember a loved one. But it also reminds us that we practice Judaism with passion and not just procedure. In many ways the shin is the subject of our vision. It represents the people, the places and the God we know as our own. The flame is the verb. It represents our actions.

It is a flame made to be in movement, as we are. We are a progressive congregation — moving with the times, striving to live up to the words of Isaiah to be a “light unto the world.” Flames never sit still, even when they are weakened, they dance, bringing light into dark places and giving warmth where it is lacking. And as it gives light, it invites others to join us.

Our mission as a congregation is to work to kindle the lights that connect us.

Having worked with our board to develop this new symbol, I have been looking at it for months now. It has served as a sign of comfort for me during these strange and uncertain days. I look at it and see our sanctuary — even when we cannot be there. I see the unbreakable chain of community. I see the passionate spirit of our congregation, who moved their Judaism onto the internet without missing a single Shabbat. I see a light that we kindled to hold onto now and to welcome us back when we are together in person again. In it, I see our congregation and I pray you do as well.