Family Friendly High Holy Day Services at RS

Open your heart, deepen your soul and celebrate…Please join us for a meaningful High Holy Day season!

Contemporary Multi-generational Morning Services– Rosh Hashanah: Thursday, September 25, 8:30 am; Yom Kippur: Saturday, October 4, 8:30 am A full service for adults; yet a family-friendly atmosphere with children of all ages. Gender-inclusive language, Hebrew transliteration, participation in singing and prayer. Informal, comfortable setting for families with young children and activities for children during the sermon. Requires a “pass”; please contact Catherine Fischer cfischer@rodephshalom.org to become a member or prospective member and get a pass.

Tashlich Service at Fairmount Waterworks
Thursday, September 25, 1:30pm, 640 Water Works Drive
Cast away your sins with breadcrumbs!  Open to all.

Afternoon Mini-Service for Families– Rosh Hashanah: Thursday, September 25, 3:00 pm; Yom Kippur: Saturday, October 4, 1:30 pm  A very brief service for families of very young (non-reading) children and their parents and grandparents. Open to the community; no charge, please just bring photo ID for security.

Letting Go This Elul

Re-eh: see, the opening word of this week’s Torah portion.  See, I set before you blessing and curse.  Look hard. Sometimes it’s hard to see what is blessing and what is curse.  What is right and what’s not right.  Or what’s no longer right.

Now on the cusp of Elul, the Hebrew month that begins Wednesday and prepares us for the teshuvah–repentance– of the High Holy Day season, we look hard so that we can tell the difference between the blessing and the curse, the good and the bad.  We look hard at our choices, our priorities, our relationship with God, our relationships with other people.  We examine the conflicts in our lives and devote ourselves to improvement, change, growth.

For this week’s summer crowdsourcing sermon, your clergy posed the question: “Have you ever carried around a grudge or a feeling that did not allow you to move forward completely?  Have you ever let go of such a feeling?”Continue reading

Ethan Kadish Battles after Lightening Strike

Ethan Kadish

The boy most critically injured by the lightening strike at the Reform Jewish overnight camp, mentioned early in this Yom Kippur sermon, continues to battle for his life.  The end of this article tells us how we can help Ethan Kadish.  As our hearts go out to Ethan and the Kadish family, we pray they will find health and wholeness.

Gather Us: Yom Kippur Morning Sermon

[vimeo http://vimeo.com/69479024] At the beginning of this summer, we learned of a shocking story.  One afternoon at our Reform Jewish camp in Indiana, during a game of ultimate frisbee, a rogue lightening bolt struck the athletic field.   The lightening seriously injured 3 campers.  Staff performed CPR, and the children were transported to the hospital. In the immediate wake of the havoc, everyone gathered in the dining hall, where the camp director led a Misheberach.  What happened next?  The camp broke into song. Continue reading

We Were Strangers, Too: Immigration Reform Advocacy

Join the Jewish community’s effort to welcome the stranger as a citizen, and advocate for comprehensive, fair immigration reform for 11 million undocumented immigrants today (info in my Yom Kippur afternoon sermon). Please add your family’s immigration story in the comments of this blog article to create a beautiful collection that demonstrates that we are a nation of immigrants.

For a direct connection to your representative, go to Take Action.  At the bottom, enter your zip and add the link to this blog post to the form letter to share with your representative our collection of family immigration stories, found in the post comments.

We Were Strangers, Too: Yom Kippur Sermon on Immigration Reform

Entry Denied

A few years ago, while celebrating Shabbat with our preschool students, I was teaching the Jewish value of welcoming the stranger.  Thinking that I was encouraging the young children to be kind to a new student, I asked them, what do you think the Torah tells us to do when we meet a stranger? …  “Don’t talk to them!”  “Find a grown-up you know!” “Don’t take candy!”

The children had been well-prepared for stranger-danger, as four-year olds should be.  The students’ response, appropriate for young children, highlights a heightened sense of caution present for adults as well.  Natural fear of that which is strange to us has a tendency to become so magnified that we are at risk of losing sight of our values.Continue reading

Choosing Life, Blessing and Joy

Reading Nitzavim on Yom KippurReading Nitzavim on Yom Kippur
by Rabbi Sue Levi Elwell

“You stand this day, all of you, before your God, the Holy One of Blessing: you tribal heads, you elders, and you officials, all the men of Israel, you children, you women, even the stranger within your camp, from woodchopper to water drawer … ” (Deuteronomy 29)

The opening of Nitzavim grabs us by our lapels and looks each of us directly in the eye. All of you, each of you, whether you stand at the top or at the bottom of the food chain, whether you command the attention and admiration of many or whether your labor goes almost unnoticed, you stand this day, poised to enter into a relationship with God, a relationship that demands your full attention.Continue reading

Practicle Preparation for a Spiritual Yom Kippur

It almost reads like a riddle:  Q: If you fast once Yom Kippur begins, and the candlelighting at the dinner before Kol Nidre brings in the start of the Holy Day, then how do you light candles and then eat dinner?   A: On Yom Kippur, you light the candles at the END of the dinner!  To enrich your holiday with this and many other Yom Kippur customs, visit, reformjudaism.org.  And challenge yourself to discover deeper meaning in the customs this year. See you at services!

Everyone’s Steps to Repentance

You can picture the daily scene:  A father yells in anger as his daughter comes home in the middle of the night, after hours of drinking.  The entire household touched by her alcoholism, they begin to isolate from some friends, tell protective lies to other friends, and close down emotionally to one another.

Continue reading