Early Learning Center at RS

by Rabbi Jill Maderer

An Early Learning Center at RS:  “From the lips of babes and infants you have established strength” (Psalms 8:3).  Next fall, our “youngest generation” will strengthen our community with its daily presence at a Congregation Rodeph Shalom of Center City Philadelphia Jewish preschool.   The Congregation’s new property across Mt. Vernon Street will open as the starter location for the Rodeph Shalom Buerger Early Learning Center in September 2010.

The Vision: Totally integrated into the life of RS, the ELC will promote the intellectual, physical, social and emotional development of each child while celebrating the rich traditions of Jewish life.  Rodeph Shalom’s rabbis will establish the Jewish content with the goal of preparing students and families for a lifetime of Jewish practice.   Not simply a day-care center, the ELC will offer Philadelphia families a full early learning curriculum while providing child care hours.  Once open, the ELC will be able to work towards current standards of naeyc accreditation and Keystone Stars.Continue reading

The Clenched Fist or Guiding Hand of Self Judgment

by Rabbi Jill Maderer  (Yom Kippur sermon delivered 9/28/09)

Picture an old, bearded rabbi, sitting at the entrance to a Jewish cemetery on Long Island.  In Tony Kushner’s play, Angels in America, Louis, a young man struggling with his soul and his identity, approaches the rabbi and shares, “I’m afraid of the crimes I may commit.”  Rabbi Isador Chemelwitz replies: “Please mister.  I’m a sick old rabbi facing a long drive home to the Bronx.  You want to confess, better you should find a priest.”  Louis insists, “But I’m not a Catholic, I’m a Jew.”  Rabbi Chemelwitz concludes, “Worse luck for you, bubbalah.  Catholics believe in forgiveness.  Jews believe in guilt.”Continue reading

Apology: The Time is Now

by Rabbi Jill Maderer  (Kol Nidre sermon delivered 9/27/09)

“This evening I let my emotions get the best of me,” Congressman Joe Wilson said in a statement to the press. “While I disagree with the president’s statement, my comments were inappropriate and regrettable. I extend sincere apologies to the president for this lack of civility.”Continue reading

It’s In Your Hands: Ethical Speech Online

 By Rabbi Jill Maderer  (Rosh Hashanah sermon delivered 9/19/09)

“What’s on your mind?” asks Facebook. “Share and discover what’s happening right now, anywhere in the world,” invites Twitter.  “Broadcast yourself,” challenges Youtube.  Or, as our own Rodeph Shalom blog requests, simply, “Comment”. 

We live in a time when almost everyone carries a smart-phone-organizer-computer-device, and a world of information is at our fingertips, right there, in our hands.  Some of the fastest-growing ways to share that information are the tools of social media or social-networking, that is, the online communications that create a public conversation through the use of interaction, or, comments. Continue reading

The Fruits of Rosh Hashanah

By Rabbi Jill Maderer

L’shanah tovah umetukah. We wish each other a good and sweet new year. Typically, we celebrate our hope for a sweet new year by eating apples and honey. But a lesser known tradition identifies a different symbolic fruit for Rosh Hashanah: pomegranates. As delicious as apples and honey are (and I love apple cake!), they are too easy!

Pomegrantes are hard. They require work, perseverance and patience. For every bite of sweetness, we have to suck off the fruit while careful not to swallow the seed. So maybe pomegranates are the more realistic symbol for the new year.  Anyone have a recipe for pomegranate cake?  (Feel free to share High Holy recipes here!) May we do the hard work of life, and may its sweetness be the fruit of our labor. L’shanah tovah umetukah.

Welcoming You to the High Holy Days

Rabbi Jill L. Maderer

At last night’s “Taste of the New Year,” Philadelphia’s wine-tasting and synagogue-matching program for young adults, I met many people who are seeking a congregation.  If you are a young adult (22-40), missed the event but would like an invitation to High Holy Day services (“High Holy Day tickets”) at RS, please contact our Membership Director Catherine Fischer.  Thank you to Deborah Gordon Klehr, Ivy and Matt Olesh for representing RS and inviting so many new-comers to High Holy Day services this year!  We were proud that Deborah was interviewed on KYW during the event!   We look forward to joining together on Rosh Hashanah to celebrate the new year and on Yom Kippur to experience the depths of spiritual connection.  L’shanah tova–a sweet new year.

Revelation in an Age of Self-Revelation

by Rabbi Jill Maderer
     How much do you want to reveal? How much do you want to know? A current debate about social networking gets to the heart about what relationships mean to us.
     The skeptics: Revealing our daily experiences on a newsfeed is self-centered. When we write on a Facebook wall, we are only thinking about what we want to express—we aren’t asking “how was your day?” True, the readers can respond with a comment. But, argue the skeptics, the moment of posting is a self-centered, one-way dialogue. Their second problem, they call “connection without cognition.” Social networks allow us to connect with many circles of friends in a short amount of time, but what is the nature of that connection? And is a relationship built on 140-character tweets, a friendship?Continue reading

Open My Lips for Prayer

By Rabbi Jill Maderer

This Friday, we continued our Shabbat summer series “Spiritual Power in Prayer” with a text that focuses on the one-line introduction to the Amidah: “O Lord, open my lips and let my mouth declare Your praise.”  The commentary teaches:

“As a person begins to pray, reciting the words: ‘O Lord, open my lips and let my mouth declare Your praise,’ the Presence of God comes into him. Then it is the Presence herself who commands his voice; it is she who speaks the words through him.  One who knows faith that all this happen within him will be overcome with trembling and with awe”  (Your Word is Fire: The Hasidic Masters on Contemplative Prayer, Arthur Green and Barry Holtz.).Continue reading

Torah Scroll-Writing Meets Technology…and Meets Women

By Rabbi Jill Maderer

For generations and generations, Jewish communities have engaged a sofer (scribe) to pen a Torah scroll.  Each scribe follows extremely specific regulations in order to make the scroll, kosher, or fit.  Although nothing has changed about these regulations, a new initiative is underway, to help make us all more aware of the sofer’s process.  Today’s Inquirer reports on one congregation’s new website that chronicles a sofer’s work on a new scroll. 

What the author of the article does not mention is the fact that there is another Torah-writing innovation of recent times.  The author refers to scribes, as men.  Yet there are at least 2 traditionally-trained female Torah scribes as well!  Female scribes and a scroll-writing website–2 examples of modern ways we can include more people in the world of Torah.

Philadelphia Museum of Jewish Art’s New Show

by Rabbi Jill Maderer

What kinds of questions can Jewish art challenge us to face? This week’s new RS Philadelphia Museum of Jewish Art (PMJA) show inspires its curator, Matt Singer, to ask: When, how and where did Judaism begin? When Abraham and Sarah entered a covenant with God and departed for the Promised Land? When Moses and his people—the descendents of Abraham, refugee slaves wandering in the desert—received the Torah at Mount Sinai?

This Friday evening, all of us have the opportunity to ask the artist what she thinks about such foundational questions of the Jewish people.  Zoë Cohen, artist of the PMJA’s new show “What Was Our Vision: Sixteen Scenes from Wandering in the Desert” will visit RS this Friday, July 17, for our 6:00pm service (pre-oneg reception begins 5:30pm). Continue reading

Abe Foxman’s Visit to RS and President Obama’s Middle East Speech

by Rabbi Jill Maderer

Last night, Abe Foxman, the National Director of the Anti-Defamation League, spoke with a small group of Rodeph Shalom members.  His visit was a last-minute arrangement and so he came with no speech, only a willingness to meet members and answer questions.  Our questions varied from interest in his personal story to interest in his commentaries on political news in Europe and its impact on anti-semitism.  Most of all, we were interested in Foxman’s response to President Obama’s speech in Cairo.  Continue reading