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

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

Would You Stop for Beauty?

On a cold January morning during rush hour, at a Washington, DC metro station, a man wearing blue jeans, a tee-shirt and a baseball cap takes out his violin and begins to play.  Although the scene looks much like any street performance, it’s actually a stunt.  This is not just any street musician. This is master violinist, Joshua Bell.

A few years ago, The Washington Post invited Joshua Bell to participate in a social experiment.  They wondered: what would commuters do if they encountered exquisite music during their rush to get to work?  Without realizing that they were listening to a one-time child prodigy whose intricate music was being played on an expensive violin, and who just the evening prior had commanded on average $100 a seat at the symphony hall, would people stop for beauty?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

First Plant the Sapling: Tu B’shvat and Our Spiritual Intention

Are you in automatic-drive?  Do you sometimes recognize a void where intention should exist?  This quest is at the root of our congregation’s Jewish Meditation offerings, Fridays 5-5:30 pm, Saturdays 9-9:10am and monthly 2nd Wednesdays 6:00-7:00 pm.
The other day, as I was driving east on Spring Garden Street from RS to a congregant’s home at 2nd and Locust Streets, I automatically turned into the right turn lane to prepare to turn off onto 6th Street.  Why did I start to turn at the wrong place?  I knew it wasn’t 2nd Street, but I am used to driving to my in-laws’ on 6th, so that’s where my car automatically goes. Does your car ever just go somewhere?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

Building for Profound Connections

An architectural rendering of a planned expansion of Congregation Rodeph Shalom. Here, the expansion as viewed from Broad Street. (handout photo)
Legacy renovation and expansion begins next month! Visionary design ensures this is not just beautiful square footage; it is values-driven space that will enable us to further our vision: to create profound connections.
(architectural rendering by KieranTimberlake, as viewed from Broad Street)
Read more in today’s Philadelphia Inquirer.

 

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