Blog entries tagged: Denominations
Running on Matzah
The Associated Press reports on the challenge facing Jonah Pesner, a Reform rabbi: This year’s Boston Marathon is on the second day of Passover, which means running on a full stomach of Matzah (to say nothing of yontif) ...
Jonah Pesner is looking ahead to his crucial carb-loading, fuel-up meal on the night before running his first Boston Marathon. On the menu: matzoh.
It’s not the usual choice for marathoners loading up on carbohydrates to drive their run, but Pesner, a rabbi, has limited options.
Passover begins just two days before the April 21 marathon, and the holiday’s strict dietary rules mean Jewish runners can’t eat bread and pasta, the normal staples in the days before the big race.
Besides matzoh, which is unleavened bread, Pesner plans to pound down foods such as potatoes during a rare “carb-load seder” the night before the race.
Pesner never considered breaking the dietary rules for the sake of the race, which he is running with his wife for an autism charity.
“For me, running the marathon is a very spiritual quest,” he said.
The marathon is always held on Patriots Day, a state holiday that falls the third Monday in April, and often comes within the weeklong Passover holiday.
At around the 15th mile, his stomach will probably be grumbling: If only you had gone to JTS or Y.U., we could be in shul right now.
But, really, we shouldn’t joke. Especially since the rabbi finds religious meaning in his running on Matzah:
Pesner never considered breaking the dietary rules for the sake of the race, which he is running with his wife for an autism charity.
“For me, running the marathon is a very spiritual quest,” he said.
The story also looks at the challenges facing a Conservative couple:
Sandy Karpen, a real estate agent from Scottsdale, Ariz., said he and his wife, Sharon, are changing their tradition of attending seders the first two nights of Passover to accommodate their training. The second seder is the day before the race, and Karpen and his wife wanted to rest, rather than attend a seder on what is typically a long night.
Their rabbi from the Conservative Jewish tradition advised them that Jews may fulfill their obligation by observing only the first day, and said they could do the same.
The 17-time marathoner admits to some guilt about straying from his lifelong tradition, but has no regrets.
“I guess sometimes you’re looking for justification for what you’re doing,” he said. “My rabbi said it was acceptable to do, and that was good enough for us.”
Maybe I was too hard on Pesner (after all, the Reform generally don’t believe in second-day yontif) ... It’s the Karpens’ Conservative rabbi who’s got some explaining to do.
UPDATE: Judging from the first comment, I should make it clear ... I was just teasing.
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Denominations,
Holidays,
Passover,
Religion
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Praying for unity
The Jerusalem Post features two opinion pieces calling for greater displays of Jewish unity – Gil Troy asserts that Israel’s secular leaders need to take a greater part in the public mourning of the Mercaz HaRav yeshiva and a Baltimore-based Orthodox rabbi says denominational leaders need to find a way to pray together in one sanctuary.
Troy:
The mass funeral on Friday March 7, outside the stricken yeshiva, was broadcast live on Israeli television, uniting the entire house of Israel in mourning. As the cameras showed one sobbing mourner after another, many viewers sitting comfortably in their own homes cried too. Alas, through the tears, one noticed something missing. In the clump of eulogizers at the front, not one leading secular politician stood, and not one secular leader spoke. That even Jerusalem’s mayor, Uri Lupolianski, is Orthodox, added to the one-sided impression. The mourning for this national tragedy appeared on television as a funeral limited to the religious community.
President Shimon Peres, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, and the cabinet ministers represent the entire country. All Israelis pay their salaries, whatever ideology the citizens may embrace. As part of the national mourning process, secular representatives of the government should have attended. Even if their security details advised against appearing, true leaders need to show leadership sometimes. Democratic leaders who fear their constituents are failing at an essential part of the job description and should consider early retirement.
The rabbi (Murray Singerman):
There is another path, one which could shore up the breach, slacken the flow of Jews deciding to opt out, and attract back those who have already left. Rabbis of different denominations should reach across the divide and find theological solutions to not only work together for the social betterment of the community, but most importantly for Jewish unity, worship together.
For the sake of the future of the Jewish people, it is time for our rabbinic leadership to reach out to other denominations and find the will to pray together in one sanctuary. This would create a new paradigm of worship, in which rabbis, standing before the Almighty, will show their congregants that a Jewish world can stand together, not just apart.
Students of history will scoff at such an effort. The pessimistic historian will cite millennia of Jewish theological rifts. The optimist, however, will ignore these precedents, if only because a Jewish optimist is committed to ahavat hinam, boundless love for other Jews.
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Denominations,
Israel,
Israeli-Palestinian Conflict,
Terrorism
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Arnie Eisen to Conservative rabbis: Yes we can
Neil Rubin, editor of the Baltimore Jewish Times, reports on the appearance of Arnie Eisen, chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, at the annual convention of Conservative rabbis – and offers plenty of his own advice:
While Conservative Judaism is in no danger of closing up shop, it must redefine and recapture its niche on the contemporary Jewish scene. Rest assured that if not inspired now, tomorrow a large percentage of the children and grandchildren of present-day Conservative Jews will be Jewish in name only.
For me, chief among the concerns is that Conservative congregations — entrenched in institutional leadership and programming — are struggling to make themselves relevant to large numbers of teens, young adults and young families.
Yes, there are efforts to stem this tide, including here. And yes, some people with children find deep purpose in synagogue life. (I’m one of them.) Yet the numbers in study after study speak for themselves.
Those surveys show that what works with younger Jews is volunteerism and social action.
Rubin says Eisen is on to the problem – the JTS chancellor acknowledged that the Reform and the Orthodox are light years ahead when it comes to political activism.
“Young people, feeling at home in their country, expect to have Judaism matter here and all over the world, and they are dismayed when it does not,” Eisen said. “We need to know that our community is active. We need to know that our people have maintained faith with [Judaism’s] compassion and righteousness.”
According to Rubin, Eisen went on to recall that many of the movement’s present-day leaders were “once inspired –– and driven to meaningful debate –– by JTS’ Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel’s passionate embrace of civil rights and the Vietnam War protests.” If not for Heschel, “Many of us might not be here today.”
Rubin ended his column on a hopeful note:
If Dr. Eisen can succeed –– and it will take years –– the Conservative synagogue can again be a venue of debate with integrity, which leads to action. If that does not happen, Jews will continue to be at the forefront of social causes, as they have ever since Emancipation itself began in the late 1700s. But sadly, our synagogues will have missed a wonderful opportunity.
A good start, he urged, would be to simply pick one issue and make it the cause of Conservative Judaism. With all that faces our nation, how hard should that be?
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Denominations
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Reform Politics
Check out this audio dispatch from Ben Harris, who is one of two JTA reporters at this week’s biennial convention of the Union for Reform Judaism. It’s a politically active, extremely liberal crowd of several thousand Jews – and, not surprisingly they’re buzzing in the hallways about the elections and cheering in the auditoriums about the need to stop any more conservative judges from getting on to the Supreme Court.
Click the play button below to listen.
[audio:/images/archive/121407_eden_harris_urj.mp3]
To subscribe to JTA’s Behind the News podcast, click here.
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Denominations,
Podcast,
Politics
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Chabad: Reform bar mitzvahs are a racket
Earlier this year Rabbi Eric Yoffie, head of the Union for Reform Judaism, talked a little smack about Chabad’s willingness to sign kids up for Bar Mitzvahs without requiring them to attend a ton of classes or forcing their parents to start showing up to shul:
Chabad, however, is often the address for those who wish to avoid serious requirements for the child or family. It is the place that you go when you do not want to join a synagogue or subject your child to a meaningful course of study. The rationale offered is that no child should be denied a Bar Mitzvah, and even with little serious training, the child and family – who are probably unaffiliated – may later be drawn into Jewish life. Perhaps.
More likely, the lesson that is absorbed is that Judaism is not a serious endeavor and that even the most significant milestones require only a modicum of work and preparation. Let me be clear: no family should ever be denied membership in a synagogue because of inability to pay. But we should protest when Chabad, or anyone else, becomes a voice of Jewish minimalism that lowers educational standards in our communities.
Now Chabad is firing back. Here’s a snippet from the recently posted reply from Chana Silberstein, the educational director at Chabad at Cornell:
What Yoffie fails to consider is that Chabad’s willingness to offer all children a bar mitzvah stems not from lowering of religious standards, but from a refusal to make children the pawns in a game of institutional extortion.
The reason most temples demand certain requirements be met before allowing children to be bar mitzvahed has nothing to do with standards—and everything to do with increasing synagogue revenue. The present system of front-loading fees such as synagogue membership and building fund, while creating an economic base for synagogue operations, discourages many Jews from getting involved.
Thus, many American Jews affiliate with synagogues only because they believe that if they do not, their child will not be able to become a bar mitzvah. In effect, the children are forced to pay the price for the failure of congregations to give their members a reason to want to join of their own volition. And so the kids become hostages. Parents are told that unless they ante up, their children will be denied this most significant of milestones. Some parents pay the ransom. Others leave the temple in disgust.
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Denominations
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