Profound Moments: Dena Herrin

By Dena Herrin, RS President

Before I tell you about a profound moment that I had, let me give you some context.  As some of you know, my connections to Judaism for most of my life were weak at best.  I left Hebrew school, which I hated, at 10 years old and barely stepped in a synagogue for the next 25 years.  I occasionally went with my parents for the High Holy Days, but really didn’t understand or engage in the service.  The word and concept of God made me very uncomfortable, still does.  Our Rosh Hashanah dinners, Yom Kippur breakfasts and Passover Seders were occasions I enjoyed as family gatherings, and to a much lesser extent, cultural events.  For me, there really was no spirituality or deep religious context to these holidays.  I joined Rodeph Shalom in an effort to find some Jewish connection for my children.  We are an interfaith family and my Jewish foundations were simply too shallow to provide relevant content and meaning for my family.  I share this background because the moment that I want to tell you about occurred in the sanctuary here, at Rodeph Shalom, at a time when my connections to Judaism and to the synagogue were very superficial.

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Profound Moments: Twice Asked “Are You Jewish?”

by Carl Schneider, presented at 09/16/11 Shabbat service

 I have lived comfortably in immediate communities that were significantly or overwhelmingly Jewish. My boyhood home was in the Wynnefield section of Philadelphia. It was so Jewish that I remember going to elementary school one day to find that there were no other students. The custodian told me that it was a teacher in-service day because it was a Jewish holiday and no kids were expected. I assure you it was not one of the High Holidays, or one of the other biggies like Passover, when even my non-observant parents knew to keep me home. I think the day in question was something like Lag B’Omer or Tu B’shevat. As a result, I have had very little personal experience with overt anti-Semitism Despite my comfortable surroundings, I have always felt that being Jewish separates me, as part of a small minority, from the larger society. Continue reading

Shabbat at RS: A Palace in Time

 by Rabbi Bill Kuhn

The vision of Congregation Rodeph Shalom is to offer the kind of Friday evening Shabbat worship service which will help create profound connections among all of our congregants. On Friday evenings we hope all of our congregation will come together to welcome Shabbat and to pray together, to support each other in times of need and in times of joy, to socialize together and to build a strong sense of community.  In order to do this, we are trying to create the kind of uplifting and transformative worship service that will attract the diverse population within Rodeph Shalom, a service which will be participatory, warm, inclusive, welcoming, spiritual and meaningful, which will help everyone connect with each other, with the soul of Jewish prayer, and with God. Continue reading

Wrestling with God: A Profound Moment

by Dan Seltzer, presented at August 19 Shabbat Service

With a sense of relief that comes with confessing, but also in the Socratic spirit of “the only thing I know is that I don’t know anything,” tonight I am going to talk about whether I believe God exists. If this topic makes you feel uncomfortable, I assure you there’s at least one other person in the room that feels the same way. Me. But first, I want to set the stage by describing a profound moment in my life. The summer after graduating college, some friends and I took a week-long canoe trip through the Allagash River Wilderness.Continue reading

Spiritual Luster and Equations: A Profound Moment

by Thomas Perloff, presented at August 12 Shabbat Service

Before sharing a profound moment, I would like to provide some background.      

First, I am a numbers guy. In high school, I won the math prize. In college, I majored in economics. In graduate school I pursued economics and was steeped in econometrics, graphs and statistics. For thirty-some years I worked in the low margin foodservice distribution business, where, if you didn’t pay close attention to the numbers, your business was not sustainable.Continue reading

Torah as Our Constant Love: A Profound Moment

Presented by Michael Mufson at August 5 Shabbat Service

When I first remember the concept of God being introduced during my first year of Hebrew School, I can still remember vividly the scene in the class room. The teacher was telling us that God is all around us. You can’t see him/her, smell him/her but you can see his deeds- and also you cannot spell his name, please use a hyphen in place of the o.  Already being the mediocre intellect at age 5, I looked around the room and kept trying to locate where this omnipotent, omnipresent god was hiding and how could I come to grips with something I cannot see? Continue reading