Counting the Omer: Faith in Animation

What is faith to you?

Baruch Ata Adonai, Elohenu Melech ha-olam asher kidishanu b’mitzvotav vitzivanu al s’firat ha’omer.  Blessed are You, Eternal our God, Ruler of the universe, who makes us holy with sacred actions and enjoins us to count the omer.

Hayom arba-ah v’esrim yom, shehem shloshah shavuot ushloshah yamim la-omer. Today is 24 days which are three weeks and 3 days of the Omer.

Wishing you a meaningful omer– Your RS Clergy

 

Counting the Omer: The Interconnectedness of all Things

Our counting of the Omer deepens the journey from Passover to Shavuot.  Join us each day with a teaching, blessing and announcement of the count. We begin with a week inspired by hesed, loving-kindness.

In New American Haggadah, Nathaniel Deutsch comments that a small act of love can lead all the way to God.  “As Franz Rosenzweig explains in The Star of Redemption, his masterpiece of Jewish theology, ‘there is no act of neighborly love that falls in the void…because of the unbroken interconnectedness of all objects.’  In this way, the commandment to ‘love your neighbor as yourself’ (Lev. 19:18) is intimately and profoundly linked to the commandment to ‘love the Eternal your God with all you heart, all your soul, and all your might” (Deut. 6:5).

When was the last time you experienced the interconnectedness of all objects?

Baruch Ata Adonai, Elohenu Melech ha-olam asher kidishanu b’mitzvotav vitzivanu al s’firat ha’omer.  Blessed are You, Eternal our God, Ruler of the universe, who makes us holy with sacred actions and enjoins us to count the omer.

Hayom yom echad la’omer.  Today is the 1st day of the omer.

Have a sweet Pesach!  Rabbis Kuhn, Maderer, Freedman and Cantor Frankel

Counting Up to Sinai: The Omer

Do you ever feel so focused on what is to come, that you miss what is before you?  When my family joins together for a meal, we laugh, we share, and we usually spend some time… talking about the next meal.  This readiness to discuss the next meal grows, not only from a stereotypically Jewish obsession with food; but also from a tendency to be in the next moment as much as we are in the present moment.  In its deep wisdom, Judaism does connect us to the lessons of the past and the hopes for the future, but Judaism also roots us firmly in the present.

In this present moment in Jewish time, we enter the season that begins with the second day of the festival of Pesach and continues until the festival of Shavuot.  This period is called the Omer, a term describing the measure of grain connected with the harvest of our agricultural biblical roots.  During this period of the Omer, there is a Jewish tradition to count, day by day, as a way to anticipate the revelation of Torah at Mount Sinai, which Shavuot celebrates.Continue reading

How Do You Recharge?

One of you recently shared with me: “Question: If someone from the 1950’s suddenly appeared today, what would be the most difficult thing to explain to them about life today?   Answer: I possess a device in my pocket that is capable of accessing the entirety of information known to humankind. I use it to look at pictures of cats and to get into arguments with strangers.”

On the Shabbat of March 7 -March 8 was the National Day of Unplugging.  Originally conceived by a group of Jewish artists, the day is meant to help us think differently about our re-chargeable devices in order to re-charge ourselves.Continue reading

One in Five Jews Say They Have No Religion: Applying Pew’s Lessons to the Future of Rodeph Shalom

Add your voice to the discussion: “Pew’s Findings on Jews in America: Hearing the Voices of Our Community” on Wed., Feb. 26 @ 7:00 pm at RS, with a panel featuring Pew Study director Alan Cooperman.

How does Jacob find meaning?  How do you find meaning in our Jewish community?  And how about the person who is connected to no Jewish organization, but might be on a quest for meaning?   How do we listen to what it is that person seeks?Continue reading

Doing and Understanding the Meaning of Our Lives

Delivered by Rabbi Bill Kuhn this past Shabbat.

I am glad to see that you’ve all survived the 3rd great blizzard of 2014.  I am sure all of us were faced with challenges of some sort or another, but it is good to gather together here in this sacred and safe place to enjoy the warmth of the spirit of our congregational family.

I have always been amazed  by what happens to people when faced with a common threat.  During a big snowstorm, people will help each other.  You may not even say hello to a neighbor normally, but during a snowstorm, you’re shoveling their walk and checking on them to see if they’re ok.  TV stations suspend their regular programming to bring you live coverage of the snowstorm and to report on how people all over the region are faring.  They show film of young strapping men getting out of their cars to lend a hand to a total stranger whose car is stuck in a snow bank.  A common threat can transform us from competitive, closed uncaring people into kind, compassionate loving mensches.

I believe we feel this same phenomenon when we come here to share Shabbat services every Friday night.  We do feel under a common threat.  Not from a snowstorm, but from a spiritual storm – a life storm. Continue reading

The Burning Bush: The Fire Within

In his D’var Torah last Shabbat, Rabbi Kuhn challenged us to wrestle with the question: what is my purpose?

At the end of each book of Torah, there is a gap, a space.  There is a legend that the white spaces in Torah are known as “white fire,” and the words of Torah are written in “black fire.”  There is an extra amount of white fire between each book.  So, last week we completed the study of the Book of Genesis, and tonight we begin anew with our study of the Book of Exodus.  The extra space between Genesis and Exodus can represent a pause, a time for us to stop and think about our lives, and a chance to change, and to consider the meaning of our lives.Continue reading

Support Group for Parents of Addicts and Alcoholics

Learn about our Caring Community’s support for people struggling with addiction and brokenness (congregants, or not; Jewish or not):
Support Group for Parents of Addicts and Alcoholics
*2nd and 4th Tuesdays starting on November 12 from 7-8:30pm
*Rodeph Shalom, parking available, enter on Mt. Vernon Street
Dear Community,
     We are members of the Caron Parents Group; parents of children with drug and alcohol addictions and, often, co-occurring mental illness. These diseases affect their mental, physical, and emotional well-being. Their addiction and suffering has made us sick, too. How can a parent not be affected by the behaviors and trauma of an addicted child?Continue reading