Bugs in My Kale: Bringing Intention to Our Tabletop

How are we connected to the food we eat? Imagine a movement that links consumption and production, shoppers and workers, in Professor Bryant Simon’s discussion: The Dinner Party, this Sunday 10/13, 10:15am at RS. (A part of the What is Your Food Worth partnership with the Feinstein Center). Below is another reflection on the connection from a D’var Torah last Shabbat:

Week after week I bring home my box of CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) vegetables.  Recently, I was putting my veggies away in the refrigerator, and planning my strategies for getting my family to eat so many vegetables in just one week. Kale?: kale chips, kale pie, kale soup.  Red, green and purple peppers?: the blindfold-guess-the-color-of-the pepper taste test game.

As I was planning, and storing the vegetables in my kitchen, I noticed a lot of bugs crawling on my vegetables. Continue reading

What is Your Food Worth?: Sukkot Reflection

Domestic goatExplore how we set intentions for Jewish food choices in our kick-off to our What is Your Food Worth initiative and first Sunday Seminar of the year.  Our discussion with Nati Passow, director of the Jewish Farm School, and Rabbi Eli Freedman is tomorrow, September 22nd 10:15-11:15am.  Whet your appetite with Nati’s thought provoking blog post.  This opportunity is a part of our What is Your Food Worth partnership with the Feinstein Center for American Jewish History at Temple University.

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

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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

Elul Reflections: I Have a Dream

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Today, we celebrate the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.  Dr. King’s I Have a Dream message of justice, change and the “fierce urgency of now” inspires us today, in a world still thirsty for racial justice and repair.  Let us be unsatisfied until, as the prophet Amos says:  “justice will roll down like waters and righteousness as a mighty stream.”  Watch this film to learn about the Reform Movement’s tremendous role in the struggle for civil rights.
L’shanah tovah– Your RS clergy

Elul Reflections: The Content of Our Character

On Friday, Rabbi Bill Kuhn taught in his Shabbat d’var Torah:

On Wed., Aug. 28, our nation will commemorate the 50th anniversary of the historic March On Washington for civil rights for African Americans.  Over a quarter million people from around our country assembled at the Lincoln Memorial, as the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his famous “I Have A Dream” speech.

It is important for our congregation to take time to think about the importance of this event.  This summer during our Erev Shabbat Services, we have been asking the question “What is relevant about Judaism in our daily lives?”  I believe the March on Washington has a lot of relevance to Judaism, as there are certainly parallels between Judaism and the African-American story in our country.  In fact, I believe Martin Luther King was the Moses of his day.Continue reading

Mideast Peace Talks: Love for Israel Doesn’t Require Hate of the Other

As we witness Mideast peace talks, the voice of Jewish support is in our hands.  When we speak to our friends, when we advocate to our leaders, when we teach our children, what will our rhetoric be?  What will be our perspective of the other?  This is the question asked in this D’var Torah I delivered Friday night.  

Last week, I visited “The Snowy Day and the Art of Ezra Jack Keats” exhibition at the National Museum of American Jewish History.  Keats, an author and illustrator of  85 books creates characters and art that come to life on the page; but true appreciation of this children’s literature requires context.  For in 1962, Ezra Jack Keats’ book The Snowy Day, became the first full-color modern children’s book to have an African-American protagonist.

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Jewish Meditation and the Dislocation of the Journey

Please join us for Jewish Meditation before Shabbat services on Friday evenings, starting August 9, 5-5:30pm (you are welcome to arrive 4:45 to settle in; please be sure to arrive by 5:15 when the doors close for silence).  In these coming weeks we will focus on brief teachings from This is Real and You Are Completely Unprepared: The Days of Awe as a Journey of Transformation, by Rabbi Alan Lew.

In an article this April, Rabbi Kuhn taught us: “A recent study found that Philadelphia has the highest rate of “deep poverty” – people with incomes below half the poverty line – of any of the nations 10 most populous cities.*  The study found that Philadelphia’s “deep poverty” rate**  is around 12.9%, or 200,000 people.”

Even as we look to the Prophets to inspire us that justice will someday flow like a river and righteousness like a mighty stream, while the homeless are in our midst, they have much to teach us.

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